Force yourself to choose
by Marlowe97
Summary: Forgotten lasagna, stolen car, lost in the middle of London's Downtown, Vitex-party tomorrow ... what else could go wrong? Oh, great. Now they've jinxed it! Sequel to "Not just one of your holiday games"
1. Chapter 1

_Because _CallMeSama _didn't let me answer their comment, I'll take the liberty to thank them out in the open for their immensely satisfying review. Thank you, I was really happy to read it! _

A/N:

_Hello again. Sorry, I said I might have more in this series. I wasn't aware at the time that I would write another 42.000 words. Hope you don't mind?_

_Title comes from the Linkin Park song: "Wastelands". You'll understand why that song slipped into my head when I was looking for a name._

* * *

_And if this is true, then this… no. But if I tweak here a little – oh… Oh yes!_ He had been working for long enough to notice the stiff muscles in his back and now that he was close to the solution, he took the time to lean back and crack his spine. Such a strange thing to do, cracking your joints. But it undoubtedly helped, at least on those days when it didn't make things worse by pinching a nerve.

Human bodies were so weird. Even now that he'd been inside one for nearly two years, he could still find new strange reactions, involuntary movements – still didn't understand the necessity for yawning – and very mortifying bodily functions. Sweating being one of the tamer ones.

"Really." The sudden voice in the so-far silent room made him perk up from his blank stare and musings and blink back to reality. "You could at least have the decency to hide a secret life as a superhero." Rose stood in the doorway of his lab, arms crossed in front of her chest.

With a sigh, she leaned against the metal door-frame and shook her head, looking incredibly fond. "Or shag your secretary. Or something. But no, I get stood up for…" She stepped into the room and took a look at his work. It didn't seem to make much sense to her, though, as he'd suspected.

He still sometimes hoped for her to suddenly completely _get_ what he would talk about, all the equations that made up the universe, all the numbers and units and little molecules and elements. It would be so brilliant to have someone to talk _science_ with, on a level that would challenge him, academically. But … that would probably never happen.

Oh, Rose was clever, so clever! And brilliant in her own, very human way. As was Donna, both Donnas, and as all his – the Doctor's – companions had been. But … they were, to the most part, all human, and that limited the amount of really intense discussions about cluster-calculations and transdimensional theories. The odd very smart humans the Doctor had now and then uncovered were sadly not companion-material. Mostly because their view of things tended to be theoretical and lab-bound instead of exploratory and adventurous.

That, or they'd turned out to be homicidal maniacs.

Either way, he'd rather have his clever, brilliant, wonderful, adventurous, curious and sometimes very threatening Rose than any sharp-minded scientist in his life, so he'd decided to live with the burden of knowing much more than everyone around him.

"… numbers?" Rose concluded, then shifted the papers a little bit around. "And graphics. What is this, it looks like…" she turned one of the sheets, "a battery?"

Had he said that Rose was clever? Oh, she was so, _so_ clever, his Rose! Might be she couldn't understand the numbers, or the words – now that he looked, nobody would understand the words. He'd slipped into Gallifreyan again. He did that, sometimes, when in a hurry to get his thoughts on paper. But she would understand the core of a thing usually within minutes. Brilliance, he'd always found, wasn't solely measurable on physics, chemistry or language. It was a state of mind; a state of the soul, so to speak.

It had always fascinated him about humans and set them apart from the stiff and detached brilliance of the Time Lords. Humanity shimmered and glowed like the embers of a fire, whereas Gallifrey had always been like distant stars; wonderful, awe-inspiring and cold.

The Doctor had not always been as enthusiastic about emotions as the incarnation he'd come from had been. Some of his past personalities had been just as stuffy and cold as every Time Lord he remembered. But on a whole, the Doctor had always leaned more towards humanity's endeavouring spirits than the observing intelligence of his own people. His… parent? For lack of a better word, had felt much more than had been good for him, maybe too much for a species that had evolved itself into being hands-off in the very literal sense. If you had two hearts beating in your chest, it meant there was more to be broken.

As he was human in the biological sense, it had gotten so much easier to let his emotions course through his body. Let them rule him now and then – even if it led to embarrassing crying-sessions on bridges or some very impressive shouting-matches with Rose or Pete. He'd been shocked about their effects on him – physical effects, like weak knees and shaking hands that wouldn't let themselves be controlled. He couldn't just shove them in a box somewhere anymore and jump away from them, babbling nonsense. But strangely enough, he could deal with them better.

Apart from having memories from nine-hundred plus years inside his head and a brain that was quicker and bigger than of any human person, his emotions fell into the same range as everyone's fell, and if humans could deal with them, he could, too. He wasn't an anomaly here.

Well, apart from the nine-hundred-years and all that, of course.

"It is. Kind of." He grinned, then frowned. "I don't have a secretary. Did you mean Mrs Ordney?" She was sort of the engineering-department's accounting-manager, and she'd be very cross if anyone would call her a secretary. "You know she's married, right?" _And nearing sixty,_ he thought, but since that one very unfortunate miscalculation about Jackie's age, Pete had kindly advised him to never, ever voice _anything_ age-related towards a female. Of any species.

Rose shook her head again and slightly cuffed him on the back of his own. "That is truly a weight off my shoulder. I have been quite concerned about you and her…"

She laughed then, probably a reaction to his face. He didn't quite get all the jokes and innuendoes humans made, not even as a human himself. It was all very confusing, they probably learned that while being children. It had been a long, _long_ time since he'd been a child. And never a human one.  
"Come on, let's get you home and into bed. You can just put this in your locker or take it home with you, but you need sleep. I know you've been awake half the night, tinkering with your secret project, so don't try the 'I'm not tired'-routine with me. Even Tony can lie better than you." She smirked and he felt himself blush, another very strange bodily reaction.

Sadly, Rose was right – he was plain shit at lying. Donna had tried to train him in the art of the White Lie, but so far, he hadn't even mastered a polite inaccuracy about someone's attractiveness. Or lack thereof. He could do it offhand, like 'you look marvellous, Mrs Petersen', but the moment that Mrs Petersen responded and asked for specifics, he would flounder and inevitably fail.

Nobody had ever really bought the Doctor's 'I'm fine'-line, so he wasn't quite sure why this lack of lying-skills had come as such a surprise.

Telling truths was a lot easier, anyway. You could twist them into something so close to a lie that people got confused, or tell so much truth that enemies thought you were stupid. Being truthful could be just as much a weapon as being a convincing liar was.

"You were right, by the way, is a battery, sort of. See, I know how to create a power-cell that could give the sonic enough power to last way beyond anyone's life-expectancy, but well…" he looked at Rose, trying to convey his seriousness, "it would be so easy to turn it into a weapon. A big weapon. Or many, many smaller ones." She nodded. Rose was maybe not always on the same page when it came to his opinion on governments and their actions, but she understood the need for fewer and less destructive weapons on Earth as a general concept.

"So, I'm trying to create one that is powerful enough but not dangerous at all, something humanity can't access before the 31st century, at least. I…"

"You are going to pack your things and go home with me, Mister Smartypants. I'm tired, you're tired and we need to be at that Vitex-party tomorrow so we need to get some sleep. Please?" Her eyelash-flutter could melt the polar-caps, he thought, and anyway, he _was_ tired. Tired humans made mistakes. Tired _Time Lords_ made mistakes, so there were enough reasons to give in.

Sighing, he assembled his papers and put them away into his drawer. The not-secret one. Nobody would be able to read them, anyway, so there was no need for overabundance of security.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2 Chapter Text

Rose had taken the car tonight instead of using the tube. Since the first time they – well, Rose, Mickey and the Doctor – had visited this parallel world, the curfew had been lifted and people had been allowed to walk all over the city unregulated. It had caused a noticeable rise in crime, which had a lot of the richer, 'upper-class'-people demanding the curfews back or at least calling for another form of security. 'Harder punishment' was commonly and often demanded. This universe didn't differ so much from Rose's original one.

So far, the government had resisted. The assassination of the President by a Cyberman, by Lumic, had shaken the country to the core. And not just this – the whole of continental Europe as well. Poland, Slovenia and the Ukraine had taken the upheaval to constitute an alliance during the cleaning-up and destruction of the last Cybus-plants, and in the more recent years, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland and Denmark had joined. Latvia and Germany were on the list to be added soon, once their economy had stabilized, as was France. Britain was still debating about joining, and there'd been calls for a public referendum to decide.

Usually, Rose didn't bother much about politics. Working for Torchwood was hard enough as it was, the bureaucracy could be demanding already. What would it mean if they joined with their foreign counterparts? Then again, getting information from France right now was torture, so anything to speed it up would make things better, in her books.

Harriet Jones was up for re-election, but apart from that, Rose didn't care enough to even know these year's opposing presidential candidates. To her defence, she'd not thought she would even be in this universe anymore by the time the election started.

Tomorrow – well, rather today – she'd have to be in a room full of politicians, rich businessmen and ambitious tycoons. All demanding Pete's attention, all trying to impress her mom so she'd put in a good word for them. Trying to sway her with sweet-talking hoggledash and fake laughter or even faker promises.

Those people didn't know a thing about Jackie Tyler, about _her_ Jackie Tyler. Parts of them remembered the other Jackie, the one 'lost in the cyber-war', and the others would have researched and only found the other Jackeline Tyler, the rich, snippy one. They wouldn't understand just how shrewd Rose's mom was, how much she didn't care about a big bank-account if it meant the owners were pompous wankers. And Rose had yet to meet anyone as savvy as Pete when it came to spot a ploy.

She didn't worry about her parents, and she didn't worry about _him_, either. He didn't much care about politics, maybe still wary about changing things towards a wrong timeline. He didn't really belong in this universe, so he tried to be inconspicuous. Well… as inconspicuous as a bouncy, loudmouthed, rude, absentminded, tall and lanky person could ever be.

But she did worry a little about herself. Not that she'd be easily cornered into anything, as the supposed Vitex-heiress. No matter that she'd never even _want_ that company, people still thought she had clout. And they would try to swarm her, demand her attention and find ways to wiggle themselves into any supposed weakness.

But he was her weakness, she would freely admit it. If they managed to get their hooks into an inkling of an idea that her boyfriend – what a daft word for what they were to each other – was strange and slightly … special, things could get ugly. She might start punching people. And while she knew the Do… oh, what the hell. He was the Doctor, after all. Not _the_ Doctor, but the _Doctor_. He'd refused, so far, any other name she and her mom had come up with, not just the funny ones. Every. Single. Name.

He got downright snippy once someone used the name John Smith, for reasons he had not yet shared with her. There simply wasn't another option but calling him Doctor, Rose decided now. 'Doc' seemed to be alright whenever Pete or Jackie used it, after all. She'd test it, tomorrow morning, to see if he'd get defensive.

"Can you slow down a little, Rose? I think I saw something…" His words startled her out of her thoughts and she took her foot off the gas and rolled to the side, stopping at the kerb.

"What?"

"Huh. I thought I saw someone … over there!" He was out of the car faster than Rose could even see, and with a sigh and a low curse, she followed him out. Really, some days she wished she could buy him a shock-collar. He was moving towards a huddled thing on the ground – was that a person? – when she heard a noise behind her. She turned, but it was too late… someone had locked themselves into her car and was starting the engine with the key she'd stupidly left in the ignition.

"Oi!" she yelled, but more out of frustration than real anger. There was nothing in the car she particularly needed, anyway, and the thing was ugly and too small for her and the Doctor, who turned around at the noise.

"Awww, no! That's… why?"

"Cus he needn't it more, an you're dumb as two lonely pennies, you are," the lumpy thing from the corner said before it shoved him, hard, and ran into the night, cackling madly all the way. He – or she? – would probably be picked up by the car a few streets over.

"Oh, goody," Rose said brightly. "I always wanted to be robbed at night in a parallel universe's London. One of my favourite dreams."

"I'm sorry," he said, sounding really contrite. He dusted off his rumpled suit-jacket from where the dirty hands had hit his chest, and glowered after the thieves. At least Rose assumed he glowered – it was pretty dark in this part of the city, far away from Uptown's streetlights. "I just wanted to help."

Rose sighed. "I know. Not your fault. Come on," she said, patting her pocket for the telephone "let's call a…" she stopped herself. Her phone had been in her jacket. The one that she'd put in the backseat of the car, because it had been too cumbersome for driving. "Oh, great. Guess we'll have to use your phone, then."

"Ah," the Doctor said, and Rose groaned because she knew where this was going. "I might have left it in my jacket."

"Which is in the car?"

"Ah… no. I forgot it in my lab." He shifted from one foot to the other. "Good thing it's not too cold out, right? We can go for a walk!" He tried to sound upbeat and optimistic, and in his defence, in the past a surprising stroll through the night-city had usually gotten Rose excited. Today, though, she was tired and already not looking forward to the party, and on top of that she'd been working non-stop for the last two weeks.

All she'd wanted was to have a nice evening in, but of course he'd had to be a daft airhead and forget about their date. Again.

_He never forgets Donna-dates_, she thought a little bitterly.

With a huff, she grabbed his sleeve. "Fine. It's this way. Come on."

* * *

Rose seemed to be a little cross with him. He'd tried to make her laugh a while earlier, but she'd only glared ahead and when he'd apologized for whatever it was that he'd supposedly done, she'd only huffed. Well, maybe he shouldn't have said 'whatever it is that I've supposedly done' while saying he was sorry, he mused. Maybe that was one of those rude-things he sometimes only spotted after the fact.

As opposed to the deliberately used rude-things he sometimes said out loud. He smirked into the darkness. Being a bit clueless about human interactions gave him the very lovely opportunity to get by with things others would be really yelled at. He usually only got a fond eyeroll. One of his favourite things was being deceptively clueless-rude to Jackie and see how far he could take it before she slapped him. He was pretty sure by now that Pete had caught on, but since he hadn't tried to interfere if there was no threat of imminent bloodshed, he couldn't be completely certain.

While he enjoyed that game, being clueless was not a state he liked to be in, not at all. He needed to get by here because his work on the manipulator wasn't done yet and so far, he'd only concentrated on making it functionable again. If he got it right, he still needed to put in safety-measures to keep passengers from throwing up whenever they jumped somewhere. Or get their brains scrambled, or something even worse.

So it was going slowly, especially since he had to make sure whatever he invented couldn't be abused by well-meaning and shit-doing humans. Just look at how a simple car-ride had turned out! Imagine he'd had the manipulator in the car… He shuddered.

"So, nice evening?" he ventured when the silent trekking got too much for him. "Right?"

Rose huffed again. "Very nice. Very nice and very cold without a damn _jacket_!"

Now, that was just unfair. "It's not my fault your jacket was still in the car!"

"No, but it's yours that the bloody car got stolen!"

That shut him up. She wasn't wrong, after all. And saying 'sorry' again would not amount to anything except more huffs. He sighed and instead of arguing this useless argument to the ground, he started to pay attention to their surroundings.

The part of London called 'Downtown' wasn't really one singular district; it still enclosed many parts of the city. But the further you went towards the middle of London itself, the less classy, less wealthy it got. Well, it wasn't exactly the middle, more slightly off-centre, away from the museums and sights and all the things tourists would want to see. The major motorways acted as a belt, binding the less fortunate parts of the city in the middle. For him, going to work meant going either around the middle or, what most people who lived on one side and worked on the other did, going through. He usually rode his fantastic, Tardis-blue bike in combination with a tube-ride. Riding a bicycle was absolutely brilliant!

Well, if you managed to stay on it, that was.

Even before Cybus Industries had created the Cybermen, Downtown had meant less money and less opportunities. It had also meant less people with earpods, which had led to the Cybermen forcefully taking people off the streets and out of their houses – or killing them outright.

Where Uptown still showed its scars in the form of burn-marks on houses and missing relatives, forever lost because there was no way to even identify, let alone bury them, Downtown didn't even have scars.

It was basically what would be left of a wildebeest after a horde of hyenas had made it their dinner.

It consisted of burnt-out remains of houses and broken-down … well, broken-down _everything_ really. There had been no time for thieving and rioting during the Cyberman-attacks, but after… oh, after. He'd not been here, then, not even been alive, but one night a few weeks back, after Cardiff, Pete had gotten really drunk and had started an argument with him about his tendency to leave the cleaning to the already downtrodden survivors. He'd tried to explain that the Doctor hadn't been _able_ to help, because he'd had to leave or the universe would've collapsed, but apparently that hadn't gone over so well.

It had taken him a bit of huffing and being angry until he'd noticed that Pete had just needed to vent some of the difficulties and terrors of cleaning up this mess he'd been involved in. Had taken him a while to understand that Peter Tyler carried – maybe not to the same extend – heaps of guilt on his shoulders the same as the Doctor did. Guilt for being partly responsible by supporting Lumic in the first place. Guilt for not having prevented more of the horrors. Guilt for backing the wrong horse – even if in the end, backing the Preachers had been the best thing he could have done, but skies above, describing them as the Scooby Gang had been utterly fitting.

And most of all, and heaviest of all, Peter suffered the guilt of surviving. Of being still there when so many were not, most noticeably his real wife but oh-so-many others. Forced to use the life he'd miraculously been granted to do something useful with. Or at least not throw it away.

He knew those feelings all too well. He remembered them and he hadn't yet figured out if there was a way to disentangle his own feelings from the ones the Doctor had provided. Wasn't quite sure he wanted to. They were his, after all. Maybe the last thing that connected him to his parent.

So, when he'd finally understood what Pete's complaints had really been about, he'd settled in and listened and let the accusations wash over him. Because ultimately, the Doctor _had_ left them all with the clean-up. No matter his reasons. And on many occasions in the past, the Doctor hadn't even had better reasons than not wanting to see all the struggles surviving would bring.

Now, he remembered some of the things Pete had told him that night. About the riots, the people fighting over supplies and – strangely – electric appliances and cars and houses. Food. People in Uptown had quickly been able to build up some kind of security for their homes and what was left of them, but people in Downtown hadn't. Lots of folks had tried to find a new home in the country, away from the worst of the rioting and scavenging and murder. Another big lot of them had stayed, though, be it by lack of ability or lack of impetus or a strange reluctance to leave the place they were familiar with.

The separation between Have's and Have-not's, always present in every civilisation in the universe, had gotten sharper and wider. A lot wider, he now realized. The streets were deserted except for very few who either didn't have a home or had to hurry back at this time of night from work. The few he saw were bundled up and incredibly dirty, in ways he didn't think he'd ever been as the Doctor. These people here weren't just dirty from grease or dust, they seemed to be dirty inside-out, a layer of hopelessness clinging to them as if they didn't think they could ever be really clean or warm or not-hungry or happy again.

Not even those poor souls on Malcassairo had looked that downtrodden and wrung-out. But they had clung to hope for a better world, hope to reach Utopia, hope for a future. Had clung to _hope_ itself. Then again, what good had it been, in the end? They'd been broken worse than even the Cybermen had been, twisted into very imaginative, very, very cruel … things. They'd been thrown into a fate worse than death itself, and for a second he thought he could hear the whirring of Toclofane above them.

Shuddering, he shoved the memories away and listened to his real senses. Nothing, just the sound of rats and tired feet and their own steps in the darkness.

He was acutely aware of Rose's and his clean, relatively new and too-thin clothes on their bodies, and if nobody was noticing yet, it was because nobody dared to look up. It would only be a matter of time until someone did. Rose was wearing a light-yellow sweatshirt and blue-jeans. In the darkness, she seemed suddenly like a beacon. He only wore his suit-jacket and a t-shirt, but both had subdued colours and he took the jacket off while walking and handed it to Rose.

She startled out of whatever thoughts she'd had and stared at him as if she'd never seen him before. "I'm not that cold. You're only wearing a t-shirt; you should keep it."

"It's more about the colour of your jumper. I think it'd be smart to not shine like a lantern in the night."

Rose snorted but seemed to take her first look around. "You're not wrong there," she conceded and put on the jacket without further arguing. "We shouldn't be much longer. If we stick close to the main road, we should be able to get back to civilisation soon."

He couldn't help himself. "This is basically the epitome of civilisation, right here."

"Oh, are we going to be judgy now? Look, we try, don't we? We… Pete and Mom and I, we try to help where we can. It's not our fault we have money." He gritted his teeth, wishing her to be a little quieter and more careful with her words. "I know what it's like to not have much… don't get me started on social class here!"

"I don't… Rose, it's not about that." Though of course it was also pure luck that they hadn't ended on the very poor side of life, he thought silently. But the same could be said about him; he'd never judged anyone for their monetary value, not in either of his lives. "I only meant that civilisation means the good as well as the bad. Proper roads also means less nature, is all I wanted to say."

"Good," she hissed. "Because you won't win an argument with me on that topic."


	3. Chapter 3

It wasn't like Rose hadn't noticed. She had – of course she had. They were walking through what you would call 'the bad part of the city', and she'd attempted to shove that thought away from her. Mostly because she tried hard to keep herself from any kind of prejudice, remembering all too well what it felt like to be snub-nosed in her first work, on the real Earth, just because her accent wasn't refined. She told herself that just because people were poor didn't mean they'd go robbing others, even though that had been exactly what had happened half an hour ago.

But not everyone without money would be violent or criminal. She knew that, and it made her a little angry that the bloody _Doctor_ suddenly had to remind her that sometimes, some of them actually _were_. She wanted it to not be true, but walking through the night with nothing but their clothes made her feel incredibly vulnerable, more so than she could remember ever being before. Not even in Grinton's car, or tied to that bed.

The imminent threat was worse than being already in danger, she realized. The thrill she'd always cherished with the Doctor, and nowadays chased by finding aliens and defending this Earth, was different than this… this gloomy doom hanging above them. It made her heart thump wildly in her chest and the breath stick in her throat. It made her jumpy and snappish as fear crawled up her spine. Fear of uncertainty, not fear of something real or tangible.

She startled once more when she felt something touch her fingers, but it was only his hand in hers. Rose had gotten used to his warmer hands, wasn't surprised anymore by his completely human temperature. Maybe one day she would not remember the cold hands of the Doctor - _the_ Doctor – and think nothing at all about her Doctor's warmth.

Gripping back tightly, she raised his hand to her mouth and kissed his knuckles, trying to make him understand that she wasn't truly angry at him. She didn't need to see him to know he'd understand, at least mostly. He might not have been human for long, but he was far from stupid or clueless. Even if some things puzzled him, the two of them knew how to communicate without words, with gestures and smiles and eyebrows and looks.

He probably got more subtext than most people did, at least if it was something basic and not inside-jokes you'd have had to be human from birth to understand. Like a foreigner learning the language of his new home who paid a lot more attention to grammar and correct speech-patterns to be inconspicuous and 'one of them', the Doctor might even have an advantage over those who'd been muddling their native grammar all their lives.

That would require him to actually care enough to make an effort, she thought and grinned. Most times, he just couldn't be bothered when it didn't concern people he liked or whose opinions he valued.

She felt the pressure on her hand increase slightly and looked up. They were in front of a house, or rather what was left of it. Maybe it had once been a storage-house, based on its proximity to the road. But now, what remained where two of the outer walls – maybe half of a third, she couldn't see enough in the darkness – studded with metal-beams and wooden structures that were sticking out of the bricks. It didn't seem much different from all the houses in this area, Rose thought. What made it remarkable, though, was its location. It had, at one time, been fenced in, the iron-wrought fence reaching right to the main-road's barriers, leaving no space between it and the tarmac to walk safely.

"Oh, this is inconvenient," he muttered next to her. Rose had to agree.

"What'd we do? We could walk along the road, it's not like there's much traffic this time of-" with a _whoosh_, a car swept past on the road, its headlights there and gone again so quickly, she hadn't even been able to properly see anything more than before. "… night. Okay, I think we should nix that idea," she admitted. Thinking back, there had been quite a lot of cars passing them while they'd walked beside the motorway. Maybe not all of them had been this fast, but one was all it would take to kill them on impact.

She didn't want to die on impact, and certainly not at her age.

"Do we go through the property? The fence must be broken somewhere by now, we could keep along the road until we can get out on the other side."

He stood still and Rose knew he was trying to see into the dark. Even though he nowadays actually needed the glasses the Doctor had used as props, his nightvision was much better than that of humans. He'd compared it to a cat's – no colour but sharp enough when there was at least a little bit of light and fantastic when it came to detecting motions.

They'd had a lot of fun testing that with her team from Torchwood, comparing their nightvision-goggles to his natural advantage. He hadn't beaten the goggles outright, but in some aspects his eyes were superior to the technical tricks. Rose smiled at the memory. He'd been a bit insufferable for a few days, crowing and walking around like a peacock. She hadn't dared snuff his ego, even though it would have been easy. It was rare that he found things beyond his intellect he was actually better at than humans - _real_ humans – so she'd let him enjoy that little victory uncommented.

It was coming in handy now, she thought.

"I don't think it's a good idea," he murmured. "I don't know what it is, but there's definitely movement. Considering that there isn't much room around here for people to live, I'd say it's someone's home. Moderately safe, easily defended. Would be high-value-property in these parts."

Rose frowned. He was right, a place like this would be much sought-after in Downtown, and whoever had claimed it wouldn't be happy about anyone trespassing. The Doctor would probably just waltz in anyway and just talk his way through, but this Doctor had to be more careful – and was smart enough to actually _be_ more careful. "Okay. So we go around. It can't be that big a property, we'll hit the road soon if we just take the next opportunity to the right again."

She felt him squeeze her fingers in confirmation and they changed their path to the left. How long could it take, after all, to walk around a building.

* * *

The moment they stepped away from the fence, he felt like they'd made a mistake. He stopped for a second, looking back towards the old building, but the movement he'd spotted earlier had doubled and he was certain now that someone was watching.

With what kind of intention, though, was anyone's guess.

Rose had taken a few steps away from him, and he knew he couldn't let them get separated. Quickly, he reached her again and took her hand back in his. "Sorry. Habit," he muttered. He wasn't sorry, and it wasn't exactly a habit. More of an indulgence. He'd been long enough without her hand in his, he rather liked to feel it back between his fingers. So why hadn't he said so?

Maybe that was a White Lie? He would have to ask Donna. He smiled. "Have I ever told you that we met Agatha Christie? She's such a wonderful person, beautiful brain. We should have gone to meet her instead of Queen Victoria."

Rose chuckled a little, then gripped his hand tighter once again. "I don't think so. Without meeting her, there would be no Torchwood. And without Torchwood, I wouldn't be here, with you. So… I'd rather be banished by the Queen and leave Agatha Christie to… Martha?" she ventured, seemingly a bit carefully.

"Donna," he replied absently, reeling a little from her words. She'd rather be here – with _him_ than meet Agatha Christie, or Shakespeare? That was … well, it was what he'd always hoped for. What he'd been fervently, maybe even a little desperately dared to believe, especially since Cardiff. But hearing it said so off-handedly was a kind of confirmation he'd never thought he'd get; because apparently being human also meant being riddled with self-doubt.

Oh, the Doctor had his moments of doubt, of course. In every incarnation, and it would surely carry on into those still to come. Probably even other Time Lords felt them, maybe even Rassilon himself.

Yeah, probably not that one.

He'd long-since realized – and by 'he' he meant specifically himself – that doubting yourself was not just human but an essential part of being alive and sentient. He wasn't sure the Doctor had understood before he'd left him; after all, he'd always been a bit confused about humans' – especially Donna's – tendencies to underestimate their values and strengths. But even a lion has moments where he doubts his abilities, and sometimes he's right – that chasm is too wide to jump over – and sometimes he's wrong and the chasm would have been easy to overcome. Self-doubt was a survival-trait, wasn't it? It was what made you careful, made you check your work and your tools. It could be debilitating if it got too strong or if someone – like, for example, your mother – undermined your ego every step you took. But it wasn't harmful as such. Like… like his power-sources; it could fuel you or it could be twisted and turned into something destructive.

"Ah, of course," Rose repeated bluntly. "Donna."

Was she angry? He wanted to ask her but instead, he shushed her with a silent hiss and a sharp press of his fingers over hers. They weren't alone anymore. Someone was following them, so silent and careful that he hadn't been able to detect them before now, distracted as he'd been.

_'What?'_, Rose mouthed and he held up a finger for her to listen, keeping them walking at a pace similar to before. He could feel once she noticed, her body going rigid and then relaxing consciously so she wouldn't stumble or give them away.

Sharp as a tack, his Rose.

"So, Agatha Christie, then? What's she like? Still writing all those … science fiction stories, then?" Her voice was forcefully cheerful, and if the lights were better, he'd be able to see her grinning manically, he was certain.

"Oh, yes, yes. Very science-based, that Agatha. Very. Yes. Did you ever read the story 'Two on the left'? Such a grand piece of writing."

"Really, you like that dribble? I preferred 'How many did we leave behind'. It had much more … value."

"Right. I read that one at least…" he stopped, pretending to count but actually listening hard, "I would say two times."

"That's not too bad?" she asked, but there was a quiver in her voice, just slight, nearly undetectable.

"You're right. Not too bad. Either way, let me suggest something."

She knew him too well, though, and spoke before he had the time, turning her hand in his so she could grip better. "Run?"

"Run!"


	4. Chapter 4

Rose felt her blood rushing through her veins, pumping oxygen to her muscles and through her body, flooding her brain with adrenaline and that unbelievably heady sense of euphoria. She and the Doctor had been running every week, sometimes two or three times even, just to get a little of that back, a little hint of how it used to be back when it was just one Doctor, one Rose Tyler, and the whole universe at their feet.

It had never come close to the real thing but it had been heady in a different, grounded way. They – she and this Doctor – had found a rhythm with each other, a way to match their so-different strides to keep up with each other and still go full tilt. She'd become an excellent sprinter, had outrun every other Torchwood-employee at the fitness-test, and he'd had to learn to pace himself in a way he hadn't had to before. They'd learned a way of running that even at the best times, she and the other Doctor hadn't managed to achieve; he'd usually led, she'd usually followed. He'd waited for her and she'd done everything to keep up, to not keep him waiting.

Oh, how she'd loved it. How she loved _him_, no matter that she'd never have been able to catch him, she would have run with him until her legs fell off, or her body weakened to a state that would force her to stay stationary so she wouldn't endanger him. She knew he'd have done everything, maybe even sit still for her. All uncertainty and insecurity about his feelings towards her that had reared their ugly head at meeting Sarah Jane had vanished and she hadn't even noticed. Somewhere along the way, she'd understood that whatever he was, _she_ was what he'd needed and wanted, no matter how much it would hurt him when he'd inevitably outlived her. She'd wanted him to take her back to the other universe, the real one. To take her on every adventure she hadn't yet had. And maybe she'd resented this Doctor a little at first, for being wingless and being… other. She'd seen the differences and been annoyed by everything not _Doctor_, at him being so… so… Well. So ordinary.

What utter horsecrap, she thought now, running at top-speed along the dark streets she could barely see. What a barmy little dumbo she'd been! There was nothing at all ordinary about him. And there was nothing ordinary about her, her life, her family. 'Ordinary' didn't exist, and hadn't the Doctor – the other one, not this one – always said that there was no such thing as an ordinary human?

What had been annoying and a little wrong in _her_ Doctor before was now what she loved the most. And she couldn't deny that running for their lives with this Doctor was actually better than with the original as he jumped over a piece of debris and pulled her along so she wouldn't fall. With him, she didn't feel clumsy, or a burden. They matched and knew each other's weaknesses, the little things the other could do better. His legs were longer and he could pull her along on long, straight stretches, while she was better at navigating narrow twists and turns.

Now, though, she could hardly see her feet or the things that were right in front of her, so she let herself be led completely and tried to keep track of their pursuers.

They were still so disturbingly silent. She could hear them now and again, when they stepped into something, and they seemed to communicate with each other because she heard voice-like whispers now and again. Other than that, their feet were nearly inaudible, drowned out by the sound of their own feet on the rough terrain.

"Left!", he suddenly hissed and without thinking she twisted to the left, yanking him along. If she'd stopped to think, she'd have thought they would run into a wall. As it was, she let him lead once more and followed him into a dark, very narrow path between two old, burnt-out houses. It was so narrow they couldn't stay next to each other, so he was in front with his arm awkwardly behind and hers stretched out before her. They had to slow down or otherwise crash into the uneven walls around them, but it would also slow down whoever was behind them.

"Rose," he hissed, "when I say, we go very sharply to the right and keep close to the wall. We'll shuffle alongside it. I'm hoping they won't see us until we find a place to hide." His voice was low and sharp, interrupted from having to pant for breath. One of the things he missed most was his respiratory bypass, though Rose didn't think it was too bad. He was still in remarkably good shape and it did make their runs a little more even between them, now that he had to actually breathe like a human.

"Now!"

She banked sharply, hit the wall quite literally with her shoulder-blade and saw him do the same, more or less. A hiss of pain was all she allowed herself, and then she was walking with her back to the wall, side-stepping as quickly as at all possible. He was still leading and he still had her hand firmly in his. They had maybe taken twenty to thirty steps when the first person after them burst from the darker-than-dark path they'd come from, followed quickly by three more. They still didn't say much, if they said anything at all, but Rose could dimly see them separating and running forward into the blackness of the city.

With an exhale she hadn't even noticed she'd been holding, Rose let herself slightly relax, but a sharp pain in her palm kept her from making any noise at all.

And so she waited, waited, waited… Until she felt the Doctor finally relax as well.

With a shudder, she slid down the wall and sat on the damp ground. Her legs were not yet capable of more running, and slowly she knew the adrenaline was leaving her body. It would make her feel shaky and weak-kneed, but right now she really didn't see any benefit from keeping upright.

"So," she whispered as she felt him sit down next to her, "any idea what they wanted?"

He snorted, then coughed a little. "No." His voice was rough and he was just as breathless as Rose. "Didn't stop to ask. You think I should have?"

She couldn't help but giggle a little. "Well, there's a time and place for social niceties. I think the middle of the night in a pitch-black city with people sneaking up from behind is neither."

"I'm glad," he snarked back, and Rose could hear the smile in his voice. "Wouldn't want to cause a faux-pas. I like that word. It sounds like something Tony would do in his trousers when he's not quick enough to reach the loo. 'Oh, has Tony done a little fo-pa? Poor Tony, now we have to get the fopa cleaned up." He snorted.

"Good one – now I'll always think about that when there's lots of snotty people around." They sat together in silence for a while, just catching their breath. Even through her two layers, Rose could feel the warmth from his body so close to her, comforting and solid and real. She leaned into him a little. "You don't, by any chance, know where we are, do you?"

She felt him sag a little and sigh. "Absolutely no idea. You?"


	5. Chapter 5

It wasn't exactly surprising that Rose didn't know their location any better than he did. They'd been running for quite a while – maybe ten minutes? It could have been fifteen, or more. Maybe even less? – and while he'd tried really hard to keep track of their surroundings, not falling down had outweighed the need for orientation. He could see better in darkness than humans, but it was nearly pitch black here, between the houses and ruins. Only the slightly lighter shade of black marked the difference between structures and sky, and without a visible moon or stars, there was no point in trying to navigate.

It seemed like they would have to find their way alone, or possibly wait 'till morning. While he disliked waiting with a passion, stumbling around in the dark without knowing what was out here with them was probably a bad idea.

Whoever had chased them might still be out looking, and they might have more mates to come help. It was still possible they only had benign intentions, but chasing and sneaking-up didn't exactly sell that idea to him. For now, he'd stick with the assumption that these strangers were to be avoided. "I think we should look for a place to stay until it gets light," he said and felt Rose jerk up beside him. She must have dozed off, which only intensified the need for shelter. "Come on, let's have a look around."

He unfolded himself from his crouched position and held out his hand for Rose to take, then pulled her up. Now that the rush of adrenaline was fading, he could feel the cold creeping into his bones. It was April, but the occasional frost-night was still common enough for people to call it 'late winter'. One of the results of Lumic's lunatic and ludicrous Cyberman-ideas had been an increase of CO2 levels in amounts even the original Earth hadn't yet managed to reach before he'd been stranded here, and the planet's climate had changed irrevocably. It was a time where every environment-activist and climate-scientist could walk tall and yell 'I told you so!', but instead they all just tried to find ways to fix the problem.

Interestingly, even with the obvious and visible consequences of the pollution, people were still reluctant to do the smart thing and vote for stronger regulations for factories, cars and whatever else could blow carbon into the atmosphere. Humans. So smart and yet so incredibly reluctant to change. It was one of the strangest things, that humanity would reach the stages they'd reached in the future. The majority would cling to their perceived comforts until absolutely nothing of it could be preserved anymore, and yet some of them were so intelligent and forward-thinking that they dragged the whole population of the planet into the future with their ideas.

When he'd still been just one person, he'd been in awe of their ingenuity and their stupidity, their everlasting curiosity and the power of a few wonderful, brilliant minds. He'd never witnessed them reaching the next stage, though. He'd always been an observer, benevolent mostly but sometimes exasperated to the point of true anger. Now, as a participant in a world where nothing was yet written for him to know, he'd have to follow the slow path, the crawl of a populace from one disaster to a stage of … well, whatever followed the disaster. It might be a stage of greatness, a reign of intellect and kindness, but it was just as likely that they'd fall into centuries of war, prejudice and terror.

He really hoped that wouldn't be the case, or that he at least managed to fix the vortex manipulator before things got really bad. He didn't think Rose would leave her family to travel with him when there was the real possibility that they'd be dead once she returned.

The two of them stumbled through the night, keeping their hands against the wall so they wouldn't walk past a passable hidey-hole. The shivers over his body were getting stronger, and he didn't think he could hide them from Rose much longer. She might give him back his suit-jacket, but that would leave them both much more visible. He didn't feel confident that it was a good idea.

"Found something," Rose whispered suddenly. She'd been slightly ahead, leading him, and now she stood in front of a niche that even for his eyes was barely visible. "It's very narrow, but it seems to be widening once we squeeze through. I could take a look?"

He felt along the edges of the gap. It was _incredibly_ narrow, but she was right, they could make it and it felt like there was a wider space behind. "Yeah…" He stopped her, though, as she was about to slip inside. "Hello?" he called into the gap, slightly louder than their conversation had been before. "We're just looking for a one-night stay, not at all interested in trouble. If someone's in there already, please let us know before attacking or biting or throwing things, yes? We'll just be on our ways if you don't want company."

They waited for a few bits, listening hard into the gap. There was nothing, and it felt empty, so he nodded to Rose and then, because black, night, invisible, he squeezed her hand to tell her she should go.

She squeezed herself between the rough brick-walls, scraping along the stone. At one point, he heard her curse something about being stuck but before he could do anything or even start to worry, she said she was unstuck and then he couldn't hear her anymore.

Just as he _was_ starting to worry, he heard her voice whisper-shouting from the blackness. "Blimey, this is … Ugh, it stinks. But it's wide enough for us to sit, and there's one more squeeze-path from the other side. It's better than nothing, I guess…"

He didn't wait for more and slipped through himself. It was a bit narrow but apparently, he was flatter than Rose because he didn't scrape along until he reached the iron spike that she'd come stuck on and it dug itself into his arm. It burned, but he was too cold to care about a little scrape. He'd already accumulated quite a few scars, not just the one from Grinton's attempt to fillet him back in February. They were all minor and harmless – a slipped kitchen-knife into his finger here, a scraped knee from taking a curve too fast on the bike there, and a few very minor burns from various sources. It was fascinating, watching them heal, seeing the changes and feeling the differences and witnessing the new skin grow over it. I contrast to Time Lord healing, there were always slight discolorations and little faults. Like hair-follicles missing or little indentions or raises in the skin.

And then he was through, and yes, it smelled incredibly bad. "Ew, seems something uses this as their toilet."

"Please, don't tell me that. We're going to stay here, so just let me imagine this is a nice, unused and only slightly smelly hotel-room. Well," Rose seemed to frown; it sounded like when she frowned. "a very tiny hotel-room."

Carefully, he slid down one wall and sat on the ground. When he tried to stretch his legs, they hit the opposite wall before he'd been able to straighten them completely, so he'd have to keep them bent. Rose at least could put her legs flat on the ground. She sighed deeply and he felt her relax in a way she hadn't been all night, then leaned against him – only to pull back a moment later. "Blimey, you're cold!" She felt his arm, and it made him shiver even worse and produced goose-bumps. "You should put your jacket back on – 's not like anyone can see us in here."

She wriggled out of the garment but before he could put it on, Rose started to rub his arms and fingers between her own, rubbing warmth back into them. It felt incredibly good.

Once he was slightly more clothed than before and a bit warmed-up, she curled into his side and snuggled underneath his arm. Even though the circumstances were less than ideal, he felt a smile creep up on his face and he hugged her tightly to him. With his head leaning back against the bricks and Rose against his side, warm and safe and snuggly, he let himself drift off into sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

It was a rather restless sleep. He'd woken twice during the night. Well, the rest of what had been night when they'd left his lab, and he really, _really_ despised how he couldn't keep track of time anymore and didn't know how long they'd been running, or driving, or hiding.  
Unsurprisingly, nightmares had raised their ugly head. He was by now used to them, used to not having control over his dreams like he'd had as a Time Lord.

Back then, before he'd been two persons, he could decide if he would let himself dream or not. A dreamless sleep, even for a species as advanced as Time Lords, wasn't truly restful. The brains of every sentient being in the universe processed things during sleep, even if 'sleep' didn't always follow mammalian rules and blueprints, needed dreams to put events and memories in the right drawers of the consciousness. Even if you were from Gallifrey and a snotty, stuck-up, rules-abiding and emotion-supressing bore, you had to dream at least once a month to stay sane.

The Doctor had probably refused to do that more than was good for him, and he sometimes – rarely, but well, he was, after all, part of himself – wondered if that would come bite the old git in the arse in the future.

Perhaps it already had. He'd been here long enough to not be part of the Doctor's future, not be privy to his state of mind. He might be a happy-go-lucky adventurer by now, but well… he doubted that.

Anyway, as a human, he didn't have any control about dreaming anymore. No chance of refusing to deal with his subconsciousness, because refusing to sleep just made everything worse. He'd learned that during the first six months on this Earth. So by now, he simply surrendered to the biological need and just tried to deal with his dreams and their aftermath. Sometimes, that included assuring Rose that he was alright – or would be, once the shaking stopped – and sometimes it only meant that he'd wake at random hours of the night and go have a cup of hot milk to calm his brain.

And on rare occasions, he woke from a dream that he wanted to keep dreaming because it was so much better than reality. Dreams about saving people, about not losing his friends and companions and daughters, for example. He dreamed of ways the Doctor had saved Donna from losing her memories, of travelling with her and Rose through time and space, of having adventures together or just simply sitting together and having boring afternoons with tea and scones. Whenever he woke, it broke his heart all over. Single heart, but he thought that it would hurt even worse if there were two to break.

Because no matter how convincing his dreams, there was simply no way to save Donna's life _and_ her memories. He'd gone over all the solution presented during sleep, every one of them, and none of them was viable or fast enough. It was the choice between letting the whole of Donna Noble be removed from existence or erasing the Doctor's existence from her. It was no choice, not really.

Whenever he woke from the illusion of a happy end, it crushed him more than every memory of burning planets and screaming people, more than the dreams from the Year That Never Was or whatever else would shove itself into his subconsciousness at night. Because it was near-on impossible, and it wouldn't have happened. Him, this him, the metacrisis-Doctor being here, with Rose and his Donna as his friend was the closest to a happy ending the Doctor could have. It hurt, every time, because he didn't want his other half to be as miserable as he inevitable would be. He had the bad feeling that he'd do something incredibly stupid. Or die trying.  
Maybe he had already regenerated, maybe the last thread that connected them was already broken and all the fears and hopes and pains of this incarnation's life a distant ache and a faint memento in some other body.  
Maybe the Doctor was still out there, hoping he'd be fine, just as he'd wish-hoped his metacrisis-double would be fine with Rose in this universe. Kicking his own happiness into 'never-gonna-happen' by kicking his love for Rose out of his life and by that, kicking _Rose_ out, too, had probably seemed quite clever.

It actually was. It was cruel and selfish, in a very strange, roundabout way, but it _was_ clever. And whenever he got angry for having lost the Tardis and his sense of time and no-one to help him through that, he tried to remember what he'd gotten in exchange.

He loved his Donna, _this_ Donna, just as much as he had loved the first one. Well… maybe not exactly as much, since Donna Noble was an essential part of his creation. But the difference was minimal, he'd still destroy the world for this Donna, as he would for Rose and maybe for Rose's family, too. A little, at least.

He'd probably regret it, speaking from experience. But he was certain that it would take a lot of effort to stop him if it ever came to that point. Good thing he was quite mortal now, he thought on occasions and then shoved that thought aside.

This night, he'd woken twice from his dreams. None of them were the kind that lingered, thankfully, and both times the crick in his neck had been worse than any nightmare. But with Rose snoring against him and drooling a little onto his shirt, he hadn't wanted to move. Now, the struggling morning provided enough light for him to see and he decided to stay awake and watch the light emerge.

It was still cold, and his bottom was numb and his knees hurt from being in their bent position for so long. Maybe he was getting old, he thought, but smiled once he remembered that biologically, he was younger than Rose.

Oh, he _looked_ like someone in his thirties, but he'd not yet told anyone that his cells and organs had only started their biological clock a year and half before. He wondered if anyone would come to that conclusion by themselves. Rose was twenty-four by now, so she was twenty-three-and-a-bit years older than him. Looking at life-expectancies of humans had assured him that the age-difference might actually be in their favour as human women tended to outlive men by about five to ten years. Taking into account that he was incredibly reckless and deducting subsequent years for that, they might just manage to live together until the very end.

Morbid thoughts this early in the morning. He shoved them aside and returned to their surroundings. The narrowness of their little hideaway was even more pronounced, now that he could see it. The opposite wall was leaning slightly towards them, but he couldn't tell if that was from structural damage or if it had been that way from the beginning. Many houses in London were bent, having been put on the wrong ground or simply been built by idiots. He couldn't quite see the wall behind him, but he suspected it wasn't as high as they'd thought during the night. It felt low, something about the air moving and the echo of their breaths.

The second pathway Rose had mentioned wasn't actually a path. It might have been at one time, but in the rising light he could see that the two walls had crumbled a few feet further in, blocking whatever track had once been there.

The smell hadn't improved. Rank and disgusting; faecal stench paired with something rotting. Something dead, something made from flesh. Looking around, he couldn't see anything that accounted for the stench and suspected that it might come from the blocked pathway. He'd smelled decaying flesh often enough to recognize it without doubt but he didn't think it was worth investigating. Whether it was human or canid, feline or rodent, it was dead and there was nothing they could do for it. Maybe it had crawled in here to die, or had fallen or become stuck. Maybe it had tried to hide here and had been found by its pursuers.

He didn't want to think about it anymore so he shut the smell out of his thought-process.

The ground was rubble-filled and hard, cold and a little damp, as even in summer the sun would never quite reach into the narrow shaft long enough to dry it out completely. A thin layer of moss grew on it, which hadn't improved the comfort. It had instead given him a wet arse.

Speaking of that. He should probably find a way to relieve himself before the front of his trousers got wet as well.

* * *

Rose woke from her sleep when her pillow started moving. It took her an embarrassing amount of time to realize where she was and why she was so stiff-jointed, but when she did, she raised herself so the Doctor could untangle from her. She yawned and watched her breath form clouds in the chill morning-air. "Time'sit?" she asked, forgetting for a moment that he wouldn't give her a satisfying answer.

He was incredibly bad with watches. So far, he'd had four of them. The first one he'd bought himself once he'd realized that hours, minutes and seconds weren't automatically provided for this body. It hadn't lasted longer than two months, then it caught fire for some completely inexplicable reason. Rose hadn't understood his reaction at the time, had thought he was pulling her leg with his sad face. To her defence, he hadn't explained how disturbing it was to lose his sense of time. She'd had to figure it out for herself and only recently she'd begun to understand that it was more than just a funny little tweak in his biology for him.

Rose had bought him his second watch, but that had gotten into Tony's clutches somehow. It hadn't exactly endeared the little tyke to the Doctor, who seemed to see her brother as a small enemy at times and a nuisance at others. She still thought they would get along like a house on fire once Tony was older and could be reasoned with. For now, it was best to keep them apart, just for her own sanity and her mom's nerves. That watch, a nice one with digital numbers that told you the date and the time and the time in other countries, had been irreparably destroyed by a combination of childlike ingenuity and a jar of lemon-curd sometime in November.

The third watch, a Christmas-present from Pete, had met an unfortunate end in the toilet-bowl – not his fault, he still claimed – and the latest one had been shattered when he'd had his bike-accident.

It was interesting. Somehow, he had managed to scrape and bruise his knee and nothing else, but his watch had been cracked so badly that the watchmaker they'd asked to repair it had stared at it in horror and pity. She had yet to decide if she would try to buy an indestructible watch or rather stock up on cheap children's watches. Probably smarter to do the second – he'd probably be the first person to prove that there was absolutely nothing that could be called 'indestructible'.

"Must be going on six, maybe five-ish," he answered while he walked towards the gap opposite their entrance. "Judging from the light, it can't yet be seven or we could see better by now. Sorry, I just…" he trailed off and she heard him unzip his trousers. Smiling, she turned her head away to pretend he had any kind of privacy. It was quite endearing how shy he was about 'private business', as he called it. Not that the Doctor had been especially open about things like that. Thinking back, Rose couldn't even remember a moment in their time together where he'd even mentioned the need for a loo. Did Time Lords even need toilets? They must, right?

"So, how are we going to get to the main road? Do you think we should walk back the way we came, or try to ask for directions?"

"Good question." He was back and reached out a hand to pull her up. When she raised her eyebrow at that, because well… no water, he blushed endearingly and tried to pretend he'd never wanted to touch her in the first place. Laughing, she grabbed his palm and heaved herself from the ground. By now, they were too familiar with each other in every sense of the word to bother about such things in these circumstances, and her hands were not exactly sterile, either. He grinned and continued. "Going back would be smart, but I'm not sure those people from last night are all asleep now. I'll vote for directions."

"Good. Because I wouldn't be able to find our way back anyway," Rose said. "Let's go, it really stinks in here."

They squeezed back through the gap, and this time it felt a lot more claustrophobic than last night. Maybe having the wall right in front of her nose and seeing it was worse than not knowing _how_ close it really was. But it was a shorter trip than she remembered it being, so it balanced out in the end.

Once outside, the Doctor stretched his back and legs, jumped a bit on his toes and wiggled his head. It made her grin. He looked like a really tall string-puppet doing a silly dance.

She turned around and startled. Their path was a gap between two buildings, or what was left of them. The right one was still mostly a building. Shuttered or broken windows and a damaged door gave it a distinctly empty feeling. The one on the left, though, was completely destroyed. The wall they'd leaned on at night only reached up to maybe nine feet high, the rest of the house was only a big pile of rubble and broken timber.

Rose turned around once more, staring at their surroundings in mounting horror. She'd known that Downtown was bad off, she'd have to been blind not to. And of course they'd been Downtown with Torchwood once or twice, but judging from the utter destruction she now saw, they'd only ever been on the fringes.

This didn't look like the 'bad part of the city'. This was a disaster-area.

"What… what happened here?" she asked, even though she was pretty sure she knew.

Her Doctor looked around, out towards the piles of rubble and the few remains of buildings that might – stretching the 'might' quite a bit – be able to provide shelter. "At least it explains why nobody was hiding in the niche," he said matter-of-factly. "It is quite a bleak neighbourhood."

Rose turned back towards the building behind them, the one left standing. "Doctor," she said, not caring that the first time using that name-title for him wasn't exactly how she'd thought to try it on. "Why is this one empty, then?"

He followed her gaze and frowned. If he'd had them with him, Rose was sure he'd have put on his glasses or get out his screwdriver. But his pockets were normal and boring these days, and he'd already complained that the sonic had been left behind with his jacket at work. There was nothing in the pockets except a few crumpled pieces of paper. She'd checked last night, when she'd worn his jacket.

"That is an excellent question, Rose. Care to find out?" He turned to her and wriggled his eyebrows in invitation. She felt herself smile but shook her head.

"Hate to be the voice of reason here, but we don't have a phone and there's nobody we know even close by. There's literally nobody close by. I think we should leave this adventure for another day."

"Spoilsport." He pouted, but it was only half-hearted. It still stung. She didn't want to be the spoilsport, the one to be his … guardian. She wanted to feel stardust underneath her feet and mystery in her veins, wanted wonders and adventures and danger and thrills just as much as he did. _'Why do I have to be the one to spoil the fun,'_ she thought bitterly. _Why do I have to be the responsible adult in this relationship? _

"I'm not," she muttered. "I'm the one who will be left behind if you follow all your urges."

The Doctor turned sharply and looked at her. "I'd never leave you behind, Rose. Never. I promise. And I'm sorry, I know I'm being reckless. It's just… But you're right, this would be a foolish time to go spelunking into the unknown. I'll try to be less impulsive, promise."

Rose sighed. "It's not that I don't want to. But… I promised Pete and Mom to be at their stupid party, and I don't want to go. And if we go in there now, I might never know if I did it because I really thought it a good idea or if I just did something stupid so I didn't have to wear a long dress." She reached out and took his hand. "How about we try to find our way home first. That way, we can come back another day and look at this."

"Hmm," he said. He'd squeezed her hand in answer, but now he was staring at the building like he'd been entranced.

"What? Doctor?"

"I… I don't know. There's something wrong here. It feels… wrong."

Hadn't they established that already? "Wrong… how?"

"It feels… well." He finally tore his gaze away and looked at her. His pupils were blown wide, nearly blacking out his iris completely. "Alien."


	7. Chapter 7

The house was giving him the shivers. Not just cold-shivers, but bad-shivers. Wrong, dangerous, disturbing. Nothing he could pinpoint, though, just a feeling deep inside his bones. Probably what humans referred to as 'gut-instinct', but as empty as his stomach was right now, he could quite certainly say it had nothing to do with his intestines.

Rose pressed his fingers together again, and with great effort, he took a step back. Whatever it was that had grabbed him, it lost its grip on him at that and he felt like he could breathe better.

"Come on, Doctor. Let's go back home."

He let himself be tugged away with ease, then shook the last remains of wrongness off and started to concentrate on where they would be going. "Okay… Where is home?"

"I was hoping you could tell me," Rose answered with a light smile, then made a decision. "Let's take this way. Judging from the sun's position, that's east." She pointed to their left and he nodded. "Our flat is west from your work, so … we go west and will eventually reach home."

It would also mean they'd have to cross all of Downtown, but he didn't have any better idea. If they found a person to ask for the direct route to the motorway, they could always change directions. With that, they set out towards the west with the bleary, weak sun at their backs.

* * *

It must have been nearing ten o'clock and they'd been walking with very little rest and quite big growls from their empty stomachs. He didn't know when Rose had last eaten, probably sometime last evening. His own meal, sadly, had been a banana at his desk and he wouldn't be able to say when that had been if someone demanded his answer at gunpoint. At a guess, sometime after lunch. Evan from the lab next door had said something about lunch and gone off, quite some time before he'd felt peckish.

For some reason, the image of a perfectly-cooked lasagne popped into his mind, with golden-yellow cheese and gooey vegetable-meat-sauce and cream-cheese-layer. Why was he thinking about lasagne? He stopped. "I missed our date last night, didn't I?" Damn! He remembered that it had been 'lasagne and movie and possibly popcorn-night'. Aww, no! He'd been looking forward to that!

Rose nodded, distracted from their mind-staggering surroundings. "A little bit, yeah."

He jogged a few steps to keep up with her. "I'm sorry, I completely forgot. Why didn't you call?"

"I did." She turned towards him, a frown on her face. "Your phone was off."

It must have run out of battery, because he distinctly remembered checking if it was switched on. He also distinctly remembered that he'd set an alarm for six that morning, and a run-out battery would at least explain it not ringing. Another big reason for finally creating a feasible energy-cell!

He hated when things like that happened. Things like empty batteries, turned-off alarms and broken watches in particular.

Not just because it was very unseemly for a Time Lord to have no sense of time whatsoever, no. Well, a little bit, of course. But that wasn't what bothered him the most. It made him unreliable and seemingly completely scatter-brained, and he wasn't like that! He did remember his appointments whenever he wasn't distracted, he just always misjudged the time between remembering and actually having to appear. Really important appointments, like meetings with colleagues or bosses were easiest to keep, but that could be due to the fact that people all around his workplace reminded him all day. Recurring ones came close second. He always remembered Donna. Rose, though, got stood up a lot more than was fair and it was a wonder she wasn't angrier at him than she appeared. He couldn't understand why she always got the worst of his forgetfulness. Maybe it was due to her own erratic schedule at work or maybe because 'going home' was a fixed point every evening but not a fixed time. And 'going home' inevitably meant 'seeing Rose', so 'seeing Rose' was a fixed event but not a fixed time.

Or maybe he was just making excuses. Maybe he actually was scatter-brained and unreliable.

In the end, there was nothing but apologizing. Again. For the hundredths time. One of these days, a 'sorry' wouldn't be enough and he didn't know what to do if that were to happen.

The Doctor, on such occasions, had always just left the planet or the year or the century, but he couldn't do it and didn't want to in the first place, so he was hoping that he would eventually manage to get his mind into understanding that seeing Rose would _always_ be an important date. He'd have to make more of an effort in the future.

After his apology and her assurance that it was fine – which he didn't believe but couldn't do anything about right then – he kept his eyes and senses on their surroundings. Under the depressingly bleak morning-sun, dampened by clouds and a slight fog, everything looked eerily familiar and soul-crushing. Pile after pile of rubble and half-destroyed walls and structures, interrupted by the occasional attempt of a shelter half-built from the remains reminded him of every place on every planet he'd ever had the misfortune to visit after a catastrophic event. Here and there, pieces of rotting cloth peaked out from the bricks and mortar; maybe curtains, maybe tablecloth, maybe – hopefully not – clothes from people who'd been wearing them at the time of the devastation.

He could see Rose's gaze linger on a piece of furniture, once green but now as dust-grey as everything in their vicinity.

"Why aren't there any people?" she asked, turning around while walking. "I mean, there's bricks and wood and even … that's a chair and there's a whole door. People could use them. Why would nobody go here and pick the stuff up that's still usable?"

It was a good question. The half-shelters hadn't been finished and definitely weren't used. Now that she'd pointed it out, he realized that even late at night yesterday—well, today, but it felt like yesterday because they'd slept between then and now, so… yesterday. Yesterday at pure darkness, when things could hide behind every corner and in any of the uncountable shadows, there had been more people walking than now at daylight. To be precise, there was exactly nobody out but them.

Something was keeping people away from this place. Something caused fear in a populace that was already very desperate, something bad enough to override their need for supplies.

"We should probably leave as soon as possible. Let's try …. That way." He pointed towards their left, where he could see the shadowy outlines of tall buildings. It wasn't west anymore, but well. The bad feeling in his bones was growing.

* * *

Rose was glad the Doctor had decided to change directions. She could have done it herself, of course, but for some reason she'd been reluctant to go anywhere else but west, towards even more rubble-piles and dust-shimmering emptiness. Perhaps it was stubbornness, but that didn't explain the relief she felt once a decision had been made by someone not her, some kind of tension leaving her that she hadn't even been aware of before.

This whole place was giving her the heeby-jeebies. As if there was someone watching them, desiring them, trying to lure them in.

"Yes. And maybe we should pick up the pace a little…" They hurried their steps but kept them even and careful. There was so much debris on the ground, a twisted ankle was be the last thing they needed.

After maybe two miles with the constant tension in her back, they finally saw actual structures, houses and shelters and signs of habitation. It still looked more like a refugee-camp than London should ever look, but she could see people huddling around small fires to keep warm in the cold April-air and relief surged through her with surprising strength.

"Oh, good, we can ask for the way now!", the Doctor exclaimed, his gloominess forgotten as a beaming smile spread on his face when he pointed towards a group of people nearby. She smiled. These occasions, he reminded her so much of his non-human counterpart that she wouldn't be able to separate them. It were the silent moments that differed, the small things, the… well, the _domestic_ things. Like sitting on a couch and watching silly shows on the telly, bickering good-naturedly with her dad or picking her up from work. Well, whenever he remembered.

She grinned at him, infected by his happiness. "Go ahead, I've got a stone in my shoe. I'll be right along." As he bounded off in his typical exuberant fashion, Rose bent down to remove the little nuisance. It had been bothering her for quite a while and had probably caused a blister already but she hadn't wanted to stop. Every instinct in her had been screaming to keep walking, to not stop, to go on and ignore everything that wouldn't kill her outright. Now, they could finally get home, and when they got there, she'd make sure to get a team to investigate this area. Something was definitely wrong in Central London.

While she was putting the shoe back on, she watched the Doctor chat with the people around the small fire. At first, she'd seen them stiffen and dig their hands into their coats, probably for weapons of some kind, but now their body-language was open and friendly, and she saw one of them actually laugh.

The Doctor, more so even than the last, big-eared incarnation, had a real knack with people. Well, he was also quite rude and could be incredibly arrogant, but most people forgave him all of it within minutes if he wanted them to. And the human Doctor had that same talent whenever he wanted to make an effort, though it was a bit tempered with Donna-like snark and bite if he wasn't paying attention.

A dangerous man, she thought and smiled. _Her_ dangerous man.

A noise from behind made her whip around, but it was only a child, standing a few feet away from her. Boy or girl wasn't easy to distinguish with all the dirt and grime. Her – his? No, it was probably a girl – hair was a mess of blond curls, unkempt and dusty, tangled up in a nest on the top of her head. Her face was narrow and dirty and she couldn't be more than six years, maybe eight at the most if you figured in the effects of possible malnutrition.

"Hello there," Rose said and went to a crouch to not startle her. "Who are you?"

The girl didn't say anything but leaned a bit away from her, eyes big and bright and dark. In fact, her eyes seemed huge compared to her face, liquid pools of a deep dark blue. She blinked and smiled tentatively and Rose held out a hand towards her.

"Don't be afraid. I'm Rose, what's your name?"

Just as the girl stretched out her hand in reply, just as their fingertips touched, someone grabbed Rose's shoulder and pulled her away, subsequently pushing her to the hard, rubbly ground.

"Don't touch it!" the Doctor yelled, but Rose didn't see him. There was nothing but a deep, calming blue in her vision, sprinkled with starlight and a warming presence somewhere in her mind.

_Come look at my home,_ the presence said, and Rose blinked and got back up on her knees to do as it said. This was a child, after all, and she needed someone to look after her. _Keep me safe, please?_

"Of course," she said and smiled at the girl. "I'll keep you safe, don't worry."


	8. Chapter 8

No-no-no-no-no! He'd only left her for a few minutes, they'd been so close, so _close_ to getting home! All while he'd been talking to Robert, Eric and Mortimer – nice chaps, very friendly and welcoming – he'd kept Rose in his line of sight. There had been nothing, he would have known if there'd been anything, but after he'd blinked, there it was.

A… a thing. It looked like a child, he could distance himself long enough to see it as such, but he could also see the wrongness, the … the threat it posed. This wasn't a child, or at least not a human child – it was a predator. Every instinct in his body curled up ready to strike and he was off running towards Rose, even while half his mind tried to process the words Mortimer had been saying just then. _"There's something out there, something bad. People go in an' never c'me back out, an' nowadays nob'dy crosses that line there, that white one ova there."_.

Rose had been just in front of the white line, but that thing was beyond and now Rose had reached across.

He yanked her backwards and she fell and it should make him feel guilty but there was just mounting horror because he'd been a split second too late. The thing had smiled and presented a mouth full of blackened, sharp, spiky teeth, disturbingly wrong in a face so innocent, under eyes so bright and shiny and alluring.

And Rose… Rose was caught. She couldn't keep her eyes away from that thing, smiled at it and reached out a hand and all he could do was grab that hand and hold it away from the thing. It didn't help, she just used her other hand to connect with the predatorial … thing.

"But Doctor, we need to help her! She's all alone, we need to find her mother!"

He glared at the thing but it didn't seem to care. It only smiled its creepy smile and licked its lips with a split tongue and kept its eyes on Rose. He couldn't hear what it said, but Rose answered anyway.

"Of course, of course. But he's a good friend of mine. He'll be able to help. Don't worry, he won't hurt you, I swear."

Now, the thing did look at him. It glared and it was a chilling gaze, cold and dangerous and glittering and old, so very, very old. He shivered.

"Doctor, you can go ahead and find help, okay? I'll go with Millie and look for her mother. She can't be far, Millie said she'd been with her only a few minutes ago." Her eyes were glazed-over and her voice a little distant, like she'd been hypnotized.

Which was exactly what had happened.

"No," he said. "We could take her with us and get help, don't you think that would be better, Rose?" He didn't think it would let her, and he was right.

"What? Oh…" Rose turned back towards him, still with a smile but an unvoiced apology in her eyes. "She says she's afraid of leaving. I think she doesn't trust men very much…" She lowered her voice. "I think something happened to her."

Oh, this thing was going to burn. One way or another, this thing was going to leave this place, maybe this Earth, maybe this _life_! Bad enough that bad things happened to children; _using_ that to trap Rose, or anyone for that matter, was inexcusable!

But right now, it wanted them separated, and he wouldn't leave Rose alone with it. Especially not when that's what it wanted.

Rose was now up and following the thing back into the rubble-area. She held its hand, and he got a firm grip on her other one so he wouldn't lose her. He would _not_ lose Rose!

The moment he touched her fingers tight, a jolt went through his arm, making his elbow tingle. He gritted his teeth and ignored it. There was no pain, it was just uncomfortable. Rose didn't seem to feel anything. She looked back at him, still smiling and grateful, and then back at that thing she kept calling 'Millie'. "See, Millie? He's fine, he'll come with us. Don't worry, I won't let anyone touch you if you don't want it."

_So_ going to burn.

* * *

Millie was cute. A little shy and she didn't talk much, but the way she looked at Rose was full of trust and a little awe and wonder. She wished Tony would look at her like that one day.

The Doctor was still clutching her hand, the one not held by Millie, and he was oddly quiet. She wondered if she'd made a mistake, maybe they should have done as he suggested, go get help for the girl and not blunder blindly into the place they'd just tried to leave?

_Do you have a mommy as well?_, Millie asked and Rose smiled. So adorable!

"Of course I have a mommy. Her name is Jackie, and she's very… well, she is a bit … she gets some getting used to, but she's the best mom you can wish for. Except yours, of course!", she hurried to add. Wouldn't do to insult the little girl's mom, after all.

_My mommy always worries. Does your mommy worry?_

"Oh, yes. Constantly! When I used to travel with … with this man, a while ago..." She clutched the Doctor's hand to emphasise that it didn't matter that she couldn't travel right now, that being with him was enough. "… we used to go all sorts of places. And my mom was always worried. Thought I might one day forget to come home." Rose trailed off. Her mom might very well worry about her even now; wasn't she supposed to go to somewhere and meet her? But they probably had enough time for that, still. It couldn't be later than eleven or noon, right?

Hadn't she been hungry only a few minutes ago? Rose seemed to remember a gnarling stomach and talking about food. Or hadn't they?

A tug at her hand brought her attention back to Millie. Such a cutie! _My mommy is the most beautiful mommy in the world. Is your mommy pretty?_

"Oh, yes. I think she's very attractive, though she sometimes doesn't really make an effort. I guess, where we used to come from, it didn't really matter what you looked like when you had an accent like ours. Nobody would look at her and see her as beautiful when she talked, and my mom really likes to talk." She chuckled. "Right, Doctor?"

"Hm? Oh, yes. Yes, she's a talker, Jackie. Rose – could you ask … uh Millie where we're going?"

Why didn't he ask her himself? Ah – right. Millie was afraid of him. Rose didn't know why, he was no threat at all. He'd never hurt a child, never! Not even Tony. Why would he even want to, Millie was just a girl.

She looked down at the mop of unruly curls. Where _were_ they going?

_I don't like him very much; he makes me shiver_

"Oh, don't worry about him. He's my friend. He won't hurt you, and I won't let anyone hurt you, I promise." Millie didn't seem convinced and Rose wondered why. What was she seeing in the Doctor? Maybe he reminded her of someone, someone bad. "Has… does he look like someone you recognize?"

_No. Yes. Maybe. But he makes me shiver. Please, can we not go alone? I don't want him see my mommy, what if she runs away?_

"Oh Millie. Your mommy won't run away. Not when she sees you are with us. You just have to call her and she will stop and then you can go to her. He's a nice man, I promise." Then she remembered. "Where are we going, Millie?"

_It's not far, Miss Rose. Just around the bend and then not far. That's where I saw my mommy last, she must be near._ Wait… hadn't Millie said something about showing Rose her home? Why…

_Do you think she's still looking for me?_ Millie's voice was filled with tears and Rose felt her heart melt a little. That poor girl! Poor, lost girl.

"Of course she's still looking! Right Doctor? Her mommy will still be looking for her, right?" She squeezed his hand, wishing him to answer the right way.

"What? Oh, yes, of course. Her… mommy. Will be looking. Hey, Rose – remember the last time a child asked for his mommy? That was some adventure, wasn't it?"

'Are you my mommy?' She remembered, of course she did. "Yes. We saved him, didn't we? He found his mommy and everything was alright."

They had, hadn't they? It had been a good adventure – everyone had lived that day, and the Doctor had danced with her. Jack had been there – she remembered Jack's smile and his constant flirting. Sometimes she wished he could still be around with them, or at least long enough to apologize to him.

She didn't quite know why she should, but there was something, Rose was certain.

"Yeah… yeah. Right. We danced. I wanted to dance with you tonight. I think that would be fun, don't you think?"

Dance? Why would they… oh! Oh, the party! Right, they should really go find Millie's mommy soon, so they could go back and prepare for the Vitex-party.

_He looks a bit like that man_ Millie said. _The bad man, with the big hands._ Her eyes were huge and liquid, threatening to spill tears. _I didn't like that man._

That poor girl! "Oh Millie. He's nothing like that man, I swear. He's a good man, he won't hurt you and I won't let him touch you, okay? He wouldn't do it anyway, but if he ever would, I won't let him. I promise."

_I don't like him. What if he hurts you?_

"He won't. Not ever. That's a fact, Millie."

They trudged on, and every rubble-pile they passed looked bigger than the last one.

* * *

Calming down was all he could do. He'd been getting angrier and angrier the further they went, that thing hooking Rose back towards it whenever she started to lose the glaze in her eyes and showed signs of coming back to the world.

It was smart and for the last three miles, it had tried to make Rose leave him and go with it alone. She refused, though, because Rose was brilliant and smart and was always slipping out from that trance and had to be reeled in by that thing.

There was no chance of them stopping, it seemed, the thing was adamant to keep walking. Maybe that was its method of hunting, walk its victims to death. Or maybe it was still an attempt to dislodge him. The way it kept glaring at him and baring its teeth, he was certain that it was more than just simple dislike or thinking him a hindrance. It perceived him as a threat, and rightly so. This wasn't like the Isolus, inhabiting a lonely child. This was its true body and its purpose wouldn't just be company. Not with these teeth.

_'Then again_, he chastised himself, _'a hedgehog has a row of pointy teeth as well, and it only eats snails and insects.'_ Fine. He would give it a chance, one chance!

Looking at their surroundings, because it was the only thing for him to occupy his mind with Rose only talking to that thing and that thing refusing to be heard by him, it didn't seem that this was a place where peaceful hedgehogs had made their homes.

Further and further they walked towards the centre of Downtown, and it got only bleaker and more depressing with each step. He'd seen enough of war's effects to recognise the look, but even with what Pete had told him about the Cybermen-war and even with the memory of the Dalek-Cybermen-battle on the other Earth, this utter destruction of houses and structures seemed extreme. It was like the further they went, the less was left recognizable. Where before there had been ruins, now there were only piles of rocks, and even further on, the rocks seemed to have dissolved into dust and rubble.

Rose was frowning, seemed to be surprised by what she was seeing. Good, maybe…

"What? No, our home isn't very big. My mom lives in a big home with my dad, Pete. But we just live in a flat, like most people." Oh no. That besotted, blank stare was back and Rose was once more fixing her eyes on that thing, a slightly dopey smile on her face. "Oh, well… I guess so. Doctor?"

"What?" he ground out between his teeth as the thing stared at him. He stared back and then gave it a smirk, his best 'I'll beat you, and you will never know when and how. I will beat you so completely that you forget you ever existed'-smirk.

"We could come back here and visit, and maybe Millie can come visit us, with her mom?"

The thing glared at him, a clear challenge in its eyes. "Oh, of course. But I thought she was afraid of me. Now she wants to visit?"

Rose scrunched up her nose, thinking. "I… you're right, it's… What? Oh, no, no – Millie! Come back here, he won't hurt you, I promised, didn't I?" And with that, Rose started to run as if she were chasing a runaway child. But that thing was still attached to Rose, pulling her along at a surprisingly fast pace.

He kept her hand in his, following in their wake in what must look like a bizarre procession – a small, child-sized thing, a young woman and a tall man, all running along rubble and devastation.

"Rose!" he yelled to be heard over Rose's loud screams for Millie. "Rose, you still have her hand! She's still there, stop running! Wake up, _ROSE!_"

The thing tore around a corner, unexpectedly and swift. Rose was right in her wake but he was thrown a little off-course and stumbled and fell. It was lucky – he would not let go of her hand for anything, he'd had too many hands slide from his grasp in his life to ignore any pain he might cause and just dug his fingernails right into her palm. Because of the sudden yank, he pulled Rose down with him and she lost her grip on the thing's tiny hand.

Tumbling over each other, he clutched Rose hard with both arms, grabbing with all he had so she wouldn't try to escape. The thing screeched, high-pitched and completely inhuman, and then it launched.

Quickly, he twisted so Rose was underneath him, and then he felt tiny claws against his neck as it slid its hands around his neck and clung on. And suddenly, he wasn't alone anymore inside his head.

An explosion of noise and fury, of hunger so deep he felt it in his bones, darkness and cold and utter, desperate hunger. _You have taken her from me! Love me, touch me, help me, protect me! I'm small and helpless,_ help me!_ I need protection, I'm lonely, my mommy is gone, you need to help me!_

He could hear her and her inner voice sounded exactly like that of a fearful child. But underneath, he felt her intentions, felt her desire to lure him into a trap, to devour him and kill him and eat him alive until he would beg for death and be denied. He shuddered and tried to dislodge her hands from his neck, attempting to stay a barrier between that thing and Rose at the same time.

_What are you?_ he asked, and the thing snapped back in astonishment. Apparently, people weren't meant to see its true form, and especially not when they were touched. _Where do you come from, I demand an answer!_

_I'm a child, a little girl. I need help_ it tried again, but it was only half-hearted.

"You're not a child. Where are you from! Tell me the planet you are from and what you want here!"

"Doctor!" Rose had dusted herself off and now she grabbed his shoulder. "Doctor, leave her alone!"

Oh – oh no. No, it was supposed to let her go! He felt the satisfaction in that thing, felt it grin and then the voice was back and he was certain the next words were for Rose and Rose alone.

_Help me, Miss Rose! He's trying to take me; he will hurt me! Help me, get me away from him! You promised, you promised, help me!_

"Rose," he said, trying to sound calm and reasonable. "Rose, trust me. This is not a child, this is not… not Millie. It… It's from another world, I don't know from where, but it will hurt you if you go with it. Believe me, please. Trust me."

_No, no! He's trying to take me, he'll hurt me, he'll take me away. Mom, Mommy! Where's my mommy, please! Please!_

Oh, that thing was good. Brilliantly acted, he had to give it that. It still hung from his neck but tried to slip away, and now he actually _had_ to touch it to keep it from touching Rose again. She was just standing there, still and confused. Not yet out of its clutches, but also not fully immersed. If it touched her, he knew, she would be completely gone again.

"Doctor, let her go. Give her to me, you're scaring her, Doctor. What are you doing?"

_Please Miss Rose, give me your hand! Get me away from him, he's trying to keep me, he's trying to separate us! Please, please Miss Rose!_

And he was, he actually was! He twisted and turned whenever Rose came close, clutching that thing against his body even though it screeched inside his head and dug the claws of one hand into his shoulder again and again. Its other hand was reaching for Rose and he'd rather die than let it touch her!

"Doctor…"

"Rose!"

_Miss Rose! Help me!_

He turned once more and there she was, Rose, one of the big rocks in her hands. Her face was pale and tears were rolling down her cheeks, but she looked determined and dangerous. It stopped him in his tracks.

The thing kept wriggling and scrabbling against him, and its voice was pleading and it really was good, so good. If he weren't able to see the truth, its voice and terror would break his heart. For a second, a split-second even, he wondered if maybe _he_ was the one enchanted and not Rose.

And then, the thing stopped struggling and looked at him, its large eyes sinking deep, deep into his mind. _Alone. So, so alone._

His hesitation was a mistake. It tore itself away from him, grabbed Rose by the hand and screamed in utter terror _He touched me! He wants to kill me, stop him, stop him, make him stop!_

It was hard to admit, but at that moment, he would have believed that thing, believed that he was actually in the progress of abducting that thing.

Except he didn't have time to think about it for long, because that rock smashed against his head, a glancing blow and he felt the skin rip open and everything turned to bright-white with black dots and starlight and the creation of suns. Sound dulled and his senses faded in and out, and the only thing he was clinging to, desperately, was the arm of that thing. It couldn't get away, it wasn't allowed to take Rose, it would not take her, it _would not_!

He heard a gasp, far away and right beside him. "Oh god, no – Doctor!" and that disgusting voice in his mind, right behind his eyes.

_You did it, help me, he's still holding me, please, oh please, oh please please please!_

Everything was blurry. Distantly, he was aware that he was on his knees; there were stones digging into his kneecaps and his head was killing him, his brain had to be clawing at its prison, trying to break free. It had to, otherwise the pain didn't make any sense.

_Hit him again!_ the thing said _If you hit him real hard, he won't ever come back and will never hurt us again._

"But…" Rose was hesitating. The shape of her was swimming in and out and whenever he saw her clearly – just briefly, always too brief – her face was the picture of confusion and hurt. This was pulling her apart, and something would break, and probably soon. He felt the thing's glee at the prospect. It was laughing inside his head, even though outward, it was sobbing to weaken Rose's resolve. He felt it pull and pull at Rose's mind, reeling her in more and more. If she took one more step, or did as it said, she would be lost to him, he knew. Because that thing knew. Because he felt it.

He blinked.

And then he let go and sank onto his backside, wary but sure enough that this was the only way. Above all else, he believed in Rose Tyler.


	9. Chapter 9

_Miss Rose! You saved me, oh god, he wanted to hurt me, thank you, thank you, thank you!_

Millie jumped into her arms and Rose had to let go of the rock in her hand. When had she picked it up? Was that blood on its side?

_Now come, quickly, we can go now, we can go see my mommy. She'll be so happy that you saved me, I'm sure she might even give you a present! Thank you so much!_ Millie's eyes were bright and shiny, but they didn't seem as adorable as they'd been before. Something had changed.

Rose shivered. What was wrong? Hadn't she just saved a child? Why wasn't she happy and proud?

_Come, come with me, Miss Rose. Come on_, Millie urged, slipping out of her arms and pulling her forward. Reluctantly, Rose set a foot in front of the other but something was missing.

She looked at her second hand. Something with her hand. Something was missing there.

Another hand.

She was missing one more hand. Why's that? She had two hands, right? There weren't supposed to be more than two hands on her body, right?

_Miss Rose, come on, come. It's not far. Come._

There was her one hand, and there was Millie's hand. And there was her other hand. It had held a rock, but that wasn't it, was it? She didn't want a rock. There was supposed to be another hand in hers. "Where's the hand?" she asked. "Why is it gone?"

_It was his hand. He's a bad man, he was evil. Look, there he is, you saved me, he wanted to hurt me! Come on now, come away. He won't follow us anymore, he's weak. You weakened him, Miss Rose!_

His hand? Why his hand? Whose hand? Rose looked, and oh, right, there was a man. He was sitting on his buttocks, looking miserable and pleading. He was slim and pale, and there seemed to be blood running from the side of his head. A lot of blood.

Red blood.

Wrong.

It was wrong. There wasn't supposed to be blood.

He looked up at her and his eyes were brown, dark brown. They seemed to be endless, and she knew she'd seen these eyes often, so often. In the morning, right after waking, and at night before she fell asleep. Inside a room that was impossible, shimmering blue and twisting colours and round things at the walls. And yet his eyes had always remained dark brown. She'd seen these eyes watching stars be born and suns collide, had seen them sad and happy and devastated and blissfully delighted. She'd followed theses eyes beyond the stars and into a black hole, and she would never give them up, _never_.

Rose turned around to the little girl. Her eyes were big and dark-blue, and there was a shine to them but it was fake. Rose could see the lie behind it now, saw the glee behind the supposed terror. This girl – was she even a girl? – wasn't panicked, not at all. She delighted in what she saw, and as Rose watched, the girl licked her lips.

Her tongue was split, like a snake's tongue.

_Miss Rose_, she said, and her voice quivered so believably. _Miss Rose. You have to stop him. Forever._ And Millie – her name wasn't Millie, couldn't be, because this wasn't a girl, was it? – picked up the rock and held it out to her, gigantic in her tiny hand. _He's dangerous, he will follow me home and do things to me and my mommy. I want to protect my mommy, please, Miss Rose_

"No," Rose said. "No, we can't. It…" She wanted to go to the man with the wonderful eyes, who was looking at her, utterly silent. He wasn't moving, not really, just sorta swaying and dripping blood from his head onto his shoulders and from there onto the ground. "It's not right. He's … he won't hurt you." But she wasn't sure anymore. She just knew that he wouldn't hurt _her_, that was what she knew.

Millie kept tugging her hand but Rose wouldn't do this, she couldn't, even though Mille was begging her with her big eyes and stroking her arm to convince her. Her touch was tingly and soft, a sweet caress of a pleading, scared little child. "Let's go find your mommy, okay? He won't follow us, he's in no shape to do it."

Millie let her go and took a step backward. She blinked at Rose and her eyes were full of tears and it was breaking her heart, it was, to deny her, but she couldn't and she wouldn't and so Rose shook her head, even though Millie stepped away even further.

_Okay,_ she said. _It's okay. You don't have to._ And she took one more step away, tears running down her little face. _You don't have to_

Rose held out her hand and Millie put the rock in it and didn't say anything when Rose let it drop to the ground. She smiled into her sweet face – wasn't she just the sweetest girl? So brave and strong. – and Millie tugged her and she followed, not looking back until she heard a noise and saw him crumble to the ground. For a second, she wanted to go to him and help him, couldn't remember any reason not to. But Millie sniffed and tugged and Rose looked back into her big eyes and then she forgot that there had ever been a man and just walked after Millie, hoping they would now finally be able to find her mommy.

* * *

He hadn't lost consciousness, but it had been a close thing. Even while lying on the ground, everything had shivered and wavered and he clung to the concrete under his hands as if it would provide him with stability.

His brain hurt, and Donna would tell him that of course it did, having a big hole in it - _again!_ \- and all. But this was different, this wasn't a concussion.

He groaned and retched. Well, maybe a little bit of a concussion. But mostly, the disorientation came from the thing, from where he had connected with its mind. He could feel it, still. It's elation at having won, it's hunger and delight and anticipation. It would eat Rose, he didn't quite know how, but it would.

It was tugging at his brain, like a hook inside a fish. Poor fish, he thought. If it felt even remotely like this, no wonder they didn't want to be caught. _Well, of course it wouldn't want to, dumbo! It's a fish, it doesn't want to die!_ Donna would yell at him and then grab his arm and help him upright. She'd pat his back and then shove him forward, telling him that he should go help Rose and be a hero once more.

Groaning, he got back into a kneel but couldn't make the transition into upright. The hook in his mind was still strong, and it pulled and tore inside his brain. He couldn't hear its voice, but he felt its emotions. An emotional link, emphatic connection – it was probably an accident. It'd used its telepathic voice on Rose to connect to her empathy-centre, everything in its appearance designed to speak to the inner instincts of humans. Small body, big head, huge eyes. If it hadn't been so _wrong_, he'd have probably fallen for the same ruse. But something inside his biology seemed to be different enough from human to cause a wrong connection, a feedback-link that couldn't be deliberate. There was no advantage of your prey feeling your intentions.

He cried out when the hook suddenly tugged harder, and even though he couldn't get upright just yet, he started crawling on his hands and knees into the direction of the pull. He would find that thing and take Rose back and then he would kill it. The hedgehog wasn't a hedgehog, after all.


	10. Chapter 10

He'd been able to raise himself up with the help of a conveniently placed steel-bar sticking out of one of the rubble-piles. It had been painful, but the tug was still strong enough to override the urge to puke and now, walking on two legs and considerably faster even though it was by no definition _fast_, he was able to keep the connection to that thing as a constant directive but not a strong-enough pull to hurt.

It gave him time to think. First of all, he'd had to think about his head. There was a wound, that much was certain. He'd felt the blood slow to a trickle and now it was probably mostly dried and sticking his hair together. The back of his neck felt gritty and itched slightly, but he would be fine. It wasn't bad enough to have caused a worrisome concussion, he thought, and the pain got only really bad when he touched the lump. He wasn't doing that anymore after the first attempt.

The world around him had gotten greyer and greyer, the dust settling on his clothes and all over his exposed skin. It looked like a cement-truck had blown up and all the fine, powdered cement had been distributed over everything.

The piles of debris had stopped getting finer and instead, the city around him was starting to take form once more.

Walls and houses appeared, their rooms at first completely exposed to the elements but getting higher and more accessible the further he went. The tug kept him from losing directions, like Ariadne's thread inside the labyrinth, leading him around corners and into dim streets and alleyways. There was nobody about, the whole area devoid of life. Not even rats or other animals, no birds. Nothing.

Where was this thing going? If feeding was its purpose, why hadn't it eaten Rose already? It hadn't, he could feel it, felt her hand in his like it was actually there, the warmth and the texture of the roughened skin, her chewed-on thumbnail. He smiled and let his own fingers stroke her knuckles, let his thumb play over the side of her hand.

To his surprise, he felt her grip back and respond, a touch he knew intimately from their lives together – now and in the past, when he'd been one person instead of two, but two persons instead of just the lonely one.

"Oh, you don't have her completely, do you?" he murmured, not caring that nobody was around to hear. "She's not yours. Is that it? Do you need her to be yours completely to devour her? She won't be."

No, she won't be. But hoping that her resistance against manipulation and mind-control was enough to keep her alive wouldn't save her. There might be other reasons why it was still leading her along.

For a brief moment, he contemplated if this was a trap for _him_ after all, but he quickly dismissed it. It didn't feel like the connection was deliberate, or that the thing was even aware of it. And even if it were so, he would still follow. He trusted Rose, knew she was very capable of defending herself, that she was so much stronger than she even understood yet. But even as a wrongly assembled Time Lord, he was still better with telepathic and other mental attacks and would be able to withstand that thing better than Rose could.

Probably. It wasn't like he'd tested his mind in that capacity yet. There was still a lot more he didn't know about his new limitations than he _did_ know. But, no time like the present!

At Rose's touch on his hand, or the mental connection that allowed him to feel her touch, the thing startled. He could feel its curiosity. Had Rose pressed its hand? Was that the reason it acted surprised? Or had it felt _his_ touch and would be coming to the conclusion that it had a mental hitchhiker?

He decided to not try it just yet, not when he still didn't know where it was taking Rose and for what purpose. He didn't want it to tear the hook out of his mind; for one, he didn't want to lose his thread to them, but he also wasn't sure he could survive that. The pain when it had first started to pull on him had been immense, and it had only been walking at the time. Even if he did survive, it would cost him the only advantage he had here.

* * *

Millie was pulling her along the destroyed roads, assuring Rose that it wasn't far anymore. She was glad. Her feet had started hurting and her knee was swollen from where she'd stumbled into a brick-pile a few miles – was it really miles already? Hadn't they just been walking for a few minutes? – back.

She frowned as the strange feeling of a hand in her hand where there was no hand came back. It wasn't Millie's cold hand, but a warm one. A big one. Every now and then, something like a caress flitted inside her mind, more a memory of touch than actual touch.

Millie's hand was so cold and smooth, Rose wondered how long she'd been living out here. Couldn't be that long, or her fingers would feel rough and dirty by now.

The further they went, the better things looked around them. Where everything had been completely destroyed before, now she found houses and homes and shelter-possibilities. Still, there were no people. None at all. Everything was silent.

"Where are the people?" she asked Millie. "There must be people around, I know people need houses and shelter. Where are they?"

_I don't know, Miss Rose. Most people are off to work, maybe that's where they all are? I don't like people, so I don't know._ She sniffed and Rose smiled down at her sweet face. _They scare me_

"Don't be scared, Millie. Nobody can hurt you; I'll be there and I'll promise."

_I remember, Miss Rose. You promised and you helped me, saved me from that man. You're a hero, Miss Rose! My mommy will be so happy that you saved me!_

Right, of course. They were here to find Millie's mommy! For a moment there, Rose had forgotten, thinking about the empty windows and vacant refuges they were passing by. How could she have forgotten? There couldn't be anything more important than helping the Doctor.

No – wait. No! Helping Millie.

What Doctor? She frowned, remembering blue eyes and short hair and a friendly, trustworthy smile. But then she recalled different hair, spiky and unruly and a smile so bright it lit up her brain from the inside, eyes so deep and brown she felt herself lost in them. Sad eyes, happy eyes, trusting eyes, desperate eyes.

Sleepy eyes with a sleepy, soft smile, a childish squeal and giggle once she noticed he was ticklish. They belonged to her, those eyes. The expression in them belonged to her.

Millie tugged her forward. _Miss Rose, look, look! There's my mommy, it must be! Come quickly, there she is!_

She looked up but there was nobody she could see. "I… there's no-one, Millie. I'm sorry." What had she been thinking about? Eyes? Rose looked down into the big blue eyes in Millie's sweet, innocent face. They were gorgeous eyes, wonderful, and the little girl was just the sweetest. "But if you show me the way, we'll go have a look, okay?"

Millie smiled up at her, trusting and a little shy. Such a sweet child. Rose hoped her mother would always be kind to this little girl.

Absently, she brushed her thumb over invisible knuckles, firm and familiar in the hand not holding Millie's.

* * *

He turned a corner and jumped right back, flattening himself against the wall.

His heart was thumping hard in his body, and he couldn't hear anything because the stupid heartbeat was too bloody loud. At the end of the road, Rose and that thing had been standing, back to him but they _had_ turned, so maybe… maybe he had been seen?

Carefully, he went into a crouch and peered around the edge from there, out of the human line of sight.

They were still there.

The thing had its back to him, as had Rose, but she was looking around and up and down, taking in her surroundings. Good. She wasn't completely mindless. The air was cold and wet, promising rain. Tiny pieces of debris were blown across the ground by a gale of even chiller air, and he thought he could feel the first drops on his skin. The tug in his head was low, just a low-key, nearly gentle thrum, but the emotions of that thing were clear.

It seemed to be waiting for something. For him? Had it spotted him after all? Carefully, he tried to test his mental connection, now that they were so close. He could feel Rose's hand like a real, physical thing in his. He felt her pressing it, again and again as if searching for comfort. He pressed back and felt a response, but nothing from the thing. It either didn't notice this time, or it was pretending.

The Millie-thing was still waiting. Anticipation was burning in its thoughts and emotions; joy about things to come and still the hunger, the gnawing hunger and the desperate need to eat. Glee, at having found prey, of being successful and worthy.

Worthy.

He nearly gasped in understanding. This thing wasn't alone. It was waiting for more, for other things like it, maybe a family or a pack or just a group of things. It had been a test, a trial for it, and now it would reap its rewards.

No.

NO!

If there were more things like Millie, there would be no chance of getting Rose away. There would probably be a very good chance he wouldn't get away, either. Not that he'd want to.

He had to act now, had to get her now, before it was too late. He stood from his crouch and braced his shoulders, stepping out from behind his corner into the open. For a moment, he felt a pang at not having his coat anymore. He would look magnificent with it, dust-covered and slapping against his legs in the gale. As it was, he only had a dirty suit-jacket that would probably never flap again in its from now on short life.

To further dampen the dramatic effect, it started to rain.

Without his coat, he probably looked like a bedraggled, dirty, abandoned poodle, but he donned the mantle of Doctor anyway, even if it was as invisible as the emperor's new clothes. "Oi!" he shouted across the space between them and stepped further into the road to close the distance. "She isn't yours to take." Inside his mind, he was yelling the same thing as loud as he could, hoping it would understand him and his intentions clearly. 'Giver her back and leave – or die.' They weren't hard to interpret.

The thing whirled around, causing Rose to stumble in surprise. It made a hissing sound, then screeched but he couldn't understand it. Touch was required, a physical connection to maintain a psychic link. But it had ears, so it would hear him, and if it didn't, he didn't give a damn.

Rose would.

"Rose, listen to me. It's some kind of thrall, it's not real. It's not a little child and it's not going to bring you to its mother. Well – maybe it is, but I'm sure you wouldn't want to meet her. Rose! Please. Look at me."

Amazingly, she did. The thrall tugged at her arm but Rose still turned and looked right at him, right into his eyes. There was barely an arm's length between them now, but she leaned away from him rather than forward. He could jump and haul her away from Millie. But he didn't know what it would do to her mind, so he resisted.

"You know me. You know I wouldn't hurt you, not for the world. Come here, let it go." He held out his hand, sideways, like he would grasp her and pull her along, like he'd done on their first meeting.

She frowned, watching his hand and then her attention was drawn back to the thing. "What? No… No." She looked back at his hand. "But Millie, I know him. He's a good man. He…" she looked once more at his face, so hard that it seemed she was searching for something. "I…" Again, at his hand.

He wriggled his fingers. "Come with me, Rose. Rose Tyler. Believe me. Follow me."

"But… but who are you?"

Who was he? Was there even an answer? He was half human, half Time Lord, in a sense that wasn't supposed to ever happen. An anomaly and an aberration. Human body, Time Lord mind. He was impossible as he was improbable, the universe's joke. Dangerous, he'd said, volatile. Born in battle, drenched in blood. He was an engineer and a soldier, had killed and had saved countless times – and yet he'd done nothing of that.  
He was the memory of too many people, and of one person in particular. No, two. Two particular persons, but right now, only one of them counted, because only one of them loved Rose Tyler. Only one of them was the right answer.

"I'm the Doctor."


	11. Chapter 11

_"I'm the Doctor."_

A shudder went through Rose's body, like someone had walked over her grave. His eyes were soft and deep and full of pleading and love, and there it was, the hand she'd felt all along, always in hers, always there, always remembered. The other hand, in her left, was cold and slick, no warmth emanated from it and she could feel it pulling at her and heard the girl speak to her.

_Liar, he's a liar! He's dangerous, don't go, don't, he'll hurt you, don't, please, Miss Rose!_

She looked down to her left, looked into the eyes of the thing she'd thought was called Millie and all she saw was, possessiveness and anger. Her eyes were menacing and cold, all their former light and pleading gone completely. She felt something slither in her mind, something dig inside her memories and her consciousness, and quickly she let go of that thing's hand and grabbed the Doctor's, _her_ Doctor's!

He pulled her towards him and held her close and Rose could feel him shaking. She doubted it was only from the cold, and she trembled along with him. "Oh God, oh God, I'm sorry," she muttered into his damp shirt, "I hit you with a rock!"

She felt his chest expand and then he chuckled, and she wasn't sure if it was from happiness or simply relief. "Doesn't matter, I'll be fine. Let's go, let's go before the others come. Come, follow me."

"Always," she said, smiling, and then she squeaked as the … the Millie-thing grabbed her again. "Get her off, get off me, get _off_!"

The Millie-thing screeched and scratched, and she heard it scream inside her mind but not, as she now noticed, through her ears.

_Mine, mine, you're mind, you stay, you're mine, no – so close, no, you're mine, you're _mine!

She kicked at the Millie-thing and hit her face, which luckily shut her up and shoved her away from her, giving her and the Doctor the opportunity to finally start running.

"Are you alright?" he asked her while they were dashing through the growing puddles of grey, dusty rainwater. "Did it hurt you?"

"Only scratched me, I'm good. What about your head?"

"Will be fine, nothing you – " and then he stopped, so suddenly as if someone had grabbed his coattails and yanked. He panted, then bent over and clutched his knees with one hand and his grip on hers was like a vice, close to painful. Rose twisted around, prepared to kick at Millie once more but she wasn't there, not anywhere she could see. The Doctor moaned, clutching his head and gritting his teeth and then his knees buckled and he dropped down, pale as a sheet. "Back, back – need to go back, oh skies above, it hurts…"

"What? What, what is it, Doctor! Talk to me!" She crouched down next to him, not sure if she should touch or better leave him. She couldn't see a wound, nothing except of course the patch where his hair was matted from his own dried blood, now slowly dissolving and further bloodying his clothes.

He groaned again and Rose got the feeling he was just barely holding back a scream. What was going on? She stared back but there was still nothing, the Millie-person had disappeared. The rain was picking up, and soon they wouldn't be able to see further than a few feet in front of them. "Doctor, please. What can I do?"

Panting, he bit out "Need to get back. Thing. Hook. Brain. Like… like…" he had to stop to swallow, the way his throat constricted she was certain he was holding back bile. "Fishing line! Please…"

"Alright, I have no idea what you mean, but let me guess and you press my hand once if it's correct, twice if not. You need to get back… to … back home?"

Two squeezes.

"Back… to … Millie?"

One.

"Okay, uh… I think she's gone?"

"Closer," he muttered, barely audible. "just closer."

"Closer to her? But why… Oh! You … it's got a hook inside your head, like a fishing-line, right?" One squeeze. "Good. Well not good, obviously, but I understand. Alright, let's get you up, c'm on, help me out a bit, you're not exactly easy to carry."

Together, they got him upright and walking, probably half his weight leaning on her as they stumbled back to where they'd just left. The closer they got, the less heavy he was, and soon he could walk on his own esteem. She looked up and even in the gloomy rain, she could see that his face was still pale but less sickly-looking. "Better?"

"Ugh, yes. Oh, let's not do that again. Urgh…" he swallowed hard. "Didn't think it would… no. No, I didn't _think_." He grabbed his hair and that certainly didn't help at all, judging from the wince he sported right after. "Just needed us to get away, but … should have known."

"Care to explain?" It was a question, but she really didn't _ask_ for an explanation. But then they were at the spot they'd left the Millie-thing, and she wasn't there at all. Rose looked around, but not a trace.

"It went this way." The Doctor pointed. "I… I would prefer walking in the other direction, but … I don't think I can."

"Yeah… still waiting for an explanation?"

He sighed, started trudging towards where he said Millie had gone. But he also started talking. "When I tried to get it away from you the first time, remember?" She nodded. Hard to forget the moment you clobbered your partner with a rock. "Well, the way it talks is through a telepathic link. There's no actual voice, apart from that screeching, but it's completely touch-based, similar to the Time Lord telepathy except … well. Different."

"It was… it felt like it was slithering inside my head, right at the end. When it first touched me, I didn't even notice."

"No, they seem to … well, it's a form of hypnosis. Quite fascinating, really, the way they would have evolved. They enthral people, make them believe what that they're harmless and helpless and they lure their prey in like that. Certainly not to something nice. It wanted to eat you, that was its sole focus. Get you to … somewhere and then eat you. It was so hungry…"

Rose stared. "It wanted to _eat_ me? That thing is only pint-sized!"

"But it's got lots of pointy teeth. I don't know, Rose. I've never seen things like that. But wherever they're from, they must have co-developed with humanoid species. Their whole biological outline is primed towards humanoid reactions and instincts. They just lead their prey away and they follow, like docile sheep. And I don't think… I think when we touched, when I grabbed it or maybe earlier, when it hung on my neck, something connected wrongly. I could feel its emotions, as well as hear its voice. Emphatic link as well as a telepathic one, but once I let go and it had you again, I couldn't hear it anymore. So the telepathy is purely dependant on physical touch and seems to be limited to one person – 's why it never tried to take my hand as well, would have been much easier, but probably not when you consider… uh. Where was I? Oh, yes. Emphatic link. I think that's not supposed to be."

"Is… is that the one hurting you?"

"Yepp. It was very helpful, because it was like a … like a leash for a dog. I couldn't lose it, or you, because I always knew where it was going. And I still do. I had hoped it had something to do with you, but… to be completely honest, I hadn't even thought about that leash anymore once you were free."

"That's what you mean with 'hook', right? There's a fishing-hook in your brain now, and the Millie-thing has the rod?"

He nodded. "Yepp. Quite painful once the distance between us gets too big."

_'Quite painful'_, she thought. _Sure. And the Tardis is 'quite interesting'._ "You really got the hang of the British understatement," was what she said with an attempted grin. "You've been practicing."

"That I have," he smirked. "I could have gone with 'excruciating', but that sounds so dramatic. Either way, this is a problem now."

"I'd say so, yeah…" She had, of course, noticed that they were still walking, not idly ambling – which, she admitted, wasn't something he ever did, and if he did ever do it, he wouldn't choose this dismal place – but with a purposeful stride. Not too fast, but not exactly sneaking. Whatever that thing was, at one point it would notice that it was being followed – by its prey, of all things – and would … do something.

Probably, Rose admitted, something like luring that prey into a trap to eat it. "So. Any plans on how to solve that problem?"

* * *

He didn't really have a plan. There weren't enough facts for him to come up with one. They were in a completely empty – well, empty of people at least – region somewhere in Downtown London, no street-signs for orientation, no landmarks to see, following a thing that was definitely of alien origin and that had, with … oh, something like 98.8775 % certainty hostile intentions. It wasn't alone, there were other beings like it somewhere, but he didn't know how many or what size they were or what kind of feeding they intended for human prey. Judging from the teeth, it was probably not going to be gentle.

Could eating something ever be gentle? Maybe they at least put their prey out without too much violence. That would be nice.

He knew that Rose could escape any time – that thing had tiny, stubby legs, very similar to those of human children, and if its brethren weren't much larger, he was pretty sure that he and Rose could outrun them for long enough to get away. What he didn't know was how much it would cost him to forcefully break the mental line between him and that Millie-thing.

He also didn't know if the thrall could be reasoned with. He knew the Doctor – the real one, the Time Lord one – would try that, would urge him, _want_ him to try it first. But he'd felt its intentions, there was nothing but hunger and desire to prove itself. No pity, certainly. Even if, by some chance, that thing and its pals were stranded on this planet by accident, he didn't have anything to bargain with!

The Doctor could talk – he had a Tardis that would be able to bring any species back to their home-world if they wanted, or find them a better planet to live. He didn't have anything like that, and he doubted Pete or Torchwood had yet found ways to travel through time and space in anything resembling Tardis-capacity.

In fact, he knew they hadn't. He'd peeked into their computers just last week. Wouldn't do for him to let them run around with knowledge and equipment humanity wasn't yet mature enough to handle. He might not be a Time Lord anymore, and he only had this universe's history and another universe's past, present and future to base judgement on, but that was still a lot more than these humans had. Pete didn't like it, but he _was_, at this point, the best authority for such things.  
He would go so far to say that he was the only authority.

None of this would help him with the current problem.

"It hasn't figured out yet that I'm still following. It doesn't seem to be overly intelligent," he said to Rose. He could feel its disappointment at having lost its prey, and it didn't seem to be in any hurry to find the things it had been waiting for with Rose. "Maybe it actually is still immature."

He hadn't wanted to say that, because with no bargaining-chip and no idea how to solve this mind-hook-problem, it could still mean that he'd have to incapacitate or even kill the Millie-thrall. Now that Rose was free, the urge to do so had considerably lessened. Pain, he could handle. Death he could handle, though he would definitely prefer to avoid it. Losing Rose? Nope.

Could barely even handle the thought.

"Hm. Do you think so?"

"I don't know. It feels… simple. Empathy is different from telepathy, it's a lot less direct. I can't read what it's thinking, only what it feels. And there are base emotions, like hunger and frustration, but nothing beyond that. No… I don't know how to describe it. No illusions, hopes, dreams. It wanted to eat you, and now it's frustrated that you escaped. It's not looking for revenge, it's not even thinking about finding you again. That doesn't mean it won't jump to the opportunity once it realizes we are still there."

"So she's not planning to lure us into some trap?"

He scraped his hands through his hair, wincing when he touched the spot where Rose had nearly knocked him out. "It's hard to say. It _feels_ simple, but as I said… Empathic connection, not telepathic. There's no anticipation in it, which would probably be a sign that it's leading us somewhere. There's only disappointment. But … I've never encountered anything like this, I don't know. It could be immensely clever and I wouldn't know." He doubted that, but… he didn't _know_.

How frustrating.

Rose hummed, and after a while she asked something that had probably been on her mind for a while. "You keep saying 'it'. Why not 'she'? Is she not female?"

Ah. Well. "Can't say. Empathic connections don't exactly provide genders in general. They could only identify desires for a certain sex, or a certain individual, though you'd have to be aware of what it is they desire, otherwise you only know they desired _something_. But as you should know, even if you saw the desired subject, it doesn't say anything about their own sex, gender or identification. If I were to have only an empathic link to Captain Jack, for example, without seeing him," he smirked a little at the thought, "I wouldn't be able to say that he has male body-parts and identifies himself as male. I would only be able to see his desires." He gave a fake shudder, "I'm really glad I never did that."

She giggled. "I think you don' really need an empathic link to tell his desires. He's not exactly shy."

He smiled back. "True." Only… not the whole truth. He would probably desire quite a few things more. Like maybe a partner to last as long as he did, or if that failed, maybe death. Jack was in so many ways in a similar situation as the Doctor. Alone in the universe, always the survivor, always the one left standing. Not a pleasant world to be in, but at least Jack had human tenacity and the ability to see good things in front of him and seize them for as long as he could.

He missed him. He would probably be a great friend to have, since he wasn't the one to leave him at the Game Station and he wouldn't be able to see that Jack was 'wrong'. But that was water under the bridge. He doubted that in this universe, Jack would have become immortal. No Rose, no Doctor – as far as he knew – and therefor no immortality. If Jack Harkness existed, he'd be a human, mortal Time Agent, and dangerous as such, just because he was a Time Agent.

And damn, now a new, shattering thought hit him. How could he travel through time, without knowledge about fixed events? He might destroy the whole universe by hopping around unsupervised! He'd have to destroy the matrix-manipulator, would have to stay in this timeline, be a good little boy and behave and…

He stopped himself. _Dumbo_, his internal Donna chastised his brain. Being a Time Lord was not a genetic trait, it was a title. You had to _earn_ the title, work for it. Train for it. The Academy wasn't a kindergarten, it was a place of learning and understanding. Stuffy, boring, incredibly annoying for him – yes. But he'd passed his exams and he'd understood the science, and he _knew_ how to recognise a fixed point in time.

He would simply have to study this Earth's history for a longer time than anticipated to understand the specifics in this universe, understand how to look at events without his inherited advantage of seeing all that is, was, could be and shall never be. He'd just have to be a lot more careful than the Doctor usually was. He'd be fine.

"I admit," he continued the line of thoughts from before, "that I hadn't been much interested in finding out more about its… Millie-thing's personality or gender or species. I…"

She squeezed his hand and flitted her thumb over his knuckles. Not too long now and his hand would turn into an erogenous zone, he thought. "You didn't like her and you don't want to like her and now you refuse to see her as a person, as having personality?"

Darn, she was good. He nodded, a little ashamed now that she'd put it so bluntly.

"I understand, but … She's there, she exists, she's not a … a rock or a chair. I don't want you to think of her as a thing. It's not good for you."

She was right. It wasn't good for him, but he was still very reluctant to change it. Because the possibility that he'd have to kill the thrall was still there, and doing so to a sentient being that _wasn't_ encased in a metal contraption and filled with genocidal instincts would be a lot harder than destroying a chair.

Reluctantly, he nodded.

"So…" Rose swung their hands between them as if they were just out on a stroll in the summer. The rain was dripping from her soaked shirtsleeves onto her palm and down to the ground, spoiling the illusion. "Is your plan to keep following until we fall down? I mean, it's a good plan, not that I'm complaining, but I'm starving. I'd murder for some chips." Now that she mentioned it, his stomach was certainly empty enough to feel a smudge of sympathy for the Millie-thing's hunger.

"Well… I was hoping we keep following and see where it would take us. Maybe we could… I don't know, offer them some other kind of food in exchange?" He was grasping at straws, and he knew it. He wouldn't even be able to understand the language, if not for the telepathic connection the Millie-thing had with its prey.

"Hm. That would work a lot better if we actually had food to offer."

"Right. Do you have an idea?"

Rose sighed, the playful sarcasm leaving her. "No. Well. There's always the 'let's split up'-idea, I guess, but I don't think I could find my way out of here alone, and definitely not find out, get help and get back here before that thing eats you."

It _was_ a good idea. But Rose stumbling around with the very real possibility of one more of the Millie-things finding her and luring her in wouldn't be any help at all – it would make both of them very worried and in the end, probably very dead.

Not exactly his ideal escape-plan. Mind churning, he nearly didn't realize that the feelings on the other end of his mental leash had changed. He stopped, peeking around the building that separated them from the Millie-thing. "It's… it's waiting again." What he felt in his head was defeat. Utter, miserable defeat and reluctance to go further. They were about to meet whoever Millie had been reluctant to confront, and they crouched down to keep a good view and to take a load off their feet. He was exhausted, and at a guess, Rose was, too.

"Hey, isn't that…" Whispering, Rose pointed to the house Millie had stopped at, and after a while, he got what she meant. They had spent the night right next to this building, he could even see their little nook from where they were. They must have taken a loop way to this point, maybe their unintentional guide had been even more reluctant to meet its brethren than he'd realized. Now though, with a visible shake, the thrall braced itself and stepped forward, towards the barred door.

They'd come full circle, and it seemed he would get his chance to investigate the spooky building after all.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Text

"Why can't we stay outside? It feels … wrong." Rose stared at the Doctor with what she hoped was a reasonable expression. "We don't know what's in there, there could be hundreds of them! And we already know that they want to eat us … what good would it do if we walk right in?"

They were sitting with their backs against the wall, staring at the entrance to the creepy old house. The rain had stopped, at last, but they were both drenched and cold and hungry and overall miserable. She thought it must be afternoon, from the way the light felt, and briefly she wondered how long it would take for her mom to realize she was missing. Probably a while longer, since she knew Rose would love to avoid the Vitex party. She'd think she was hiding, and it wouldn't take a lot to get her Doctor to hide as well.

In fact, he'd probably be the one to find the best hide-out and the first to crawl into it.

Sadly, 'nearly being eaten by a half-sized, human-like outer-space monster' didn't count as viable excuse for missing important events in the Tyler-household. She'd tried that one before and had only been granted an hour longer to take a shower and find suitable clothes.

"And do what? Sit out here until they come back out? Do you think that will make them less dangerous, or less numerous?" He looked awful. His face was pale and his hair clung to his head, except where he'd run his hand through it, and she doubted that the knock on his skull was really as small a thing as he was trying to let her believe. His shirt looked like he'd been the victim in some vampire-slasher-movie, and it was hard to swallow that her own hand had been responsible for it.

Rose didn't feel any better than he looked. She was cold and wet, soaked right down to her knickers and probably under her skin as well. It would take hours for her to warm up, even in a hot shower, and the thought of warm water made her shudder from longing. Angrily, she wiped a strand of wet hair from her face. "I don't know. But walking right into their lair can't be much better!"

She sighed, all the anger draining away. It wasn't his fault they were here. If she hadn't been such a gullible fool, they would have been back home hours ago. Just as she could feel the pinpricks of developing tears behind her eyes, he took her hand once more.

"Rose. I wish I could find another way, but I don't know what's going on. I don't exactly want to go in there, either." _Except you do, don't you?_ she thought a little bitterly, very aware of her hypocrisy. Under normal circumstances, she'd be up inside that building faster than you could say 'horsefly'. He continued, oblivious to her frustration. "But staying out here isn't an option for me. Leaving you outside… well, if that's what you want, I'll have to get to know you all over again. Because I clearly misjudged you all the time."

It was completely unfair how that soft smile of his could transform her into a weak-willed puddle of goo. "I will not let you walk in there alone, and you know it."

He grinned, and she had to smile back. Couldn't help it, not when she wasn't truly angry at him in the first place. "So… that leaves us with exactly one option. I need to know more before we can – oh." He stopped abruptly and his face twisted into a mask of concentration and a little bit of revulsion. "Oh… I think… If I interpret this correctly, the thi – uh, 'Millie'" Rose could basically see the air-quotes, "has met … uh, their mate." He frowned again.

"What? What do you feel? Can you tell me? Can it help us?" He didn't look happy, whatever it was he was experiencing, but maybe it would be helpful for their situation.

"Okay, let's see…" He frowned, probably sorting all the information into neat piles. "First, it was scared. Capturing you was supposed to be some way of proving its worth; that's what I felt when I got you away from it. So there was trepidation, I'd say. Just now, it must have faced up to the… I'll just call it mate, because that's what it feels like in its head. So, facing up to the mate, all a big pile of emotions. Anger, shame, stuff you'd feel if you had to stand in front of your significant other and tell them you did something wrong. Well… you get what I mean. Bit of fear, bit of pain, bit of offence. Anyway, it – she, or he, doesn't matter – is now very content, and the hunger is getting less. I'm taking bets that somehow, the mate found food and they're now eating." He looked a little sick, and she wondered if he'd simplified the emotions for her sake.

Ah, who was she kidding. Of course he had.

"So… you're saying now would be a good time to go in?" When he nodded, Rose sighed once more and then scrambled to her feet. "Well, then. Let's go take a look inside the creepy old house. Oh joy." But inside, a well-known tingle started to spread once more.

* * *

They could slip through the door without a problem and they found themselves in the gloomy, dim entrance-hall of some kind of office-building. The light could only find its way inside through slits in the barred-up windows and through the door, which hung on a single hinge and was therefor permanently ajar.

Luckily, the gap was wide enough for them to enter without making a noise.

The Doctor stopped, hand up to keep her still. Not that she would have made a sound – working for Torchwood and jumping through universes had taught her a lot of new and interesting skills. But because of his link to the Millie-thing, he was the one in charge. And who was she kidding – getting him to not be in charge would take effort she wasn't sure she cared enough to make. They listened, but Rose couldn't hear anything so she took in the room around them.

On closer inspection, what she'd thought to be an office was probably more likely a conglomerate of offices or medical practices. The hallway was completely empty, no reception and only one door to their right. The empty space on the wood suggested that at one point, a plaque had informed the visitors of its occupants. It seemed closed and forbidding.

To their left was a lift, open doors allowing a look inside a very disgusting lift-cage. Old graffiti shouted obscenities at them, barely readable in this lighting, and the dirt, rotten garbage and probably shit and other revolting stuff on the ground made her wish it was even darker. Right in front of them, a stairway led to the upper floor, dirt-caked and dusty. The steps were covered in footsteps, only few of them wet and therefor recent. They were small, childlike. There were no bigger ones, so apparently they wouldn't meet giant-sized parents or humungous mates.

_'First bit of good news'_, Rose thought.

The Doctor had his head cocked, like an animal trying to hear better. His eyes were closed and there was that cute little frown he always got when he was concentrating. After a few moments – felt like a long time, exposed like they were in the middle of an open room – he shook himself back to the present and indicated the stairs with a nod and a raised eyebrow. She rolled her eyes and pointed to the footsteps, which gave her the pleasure of seeing him embarrassed for missing the obvious.

But since he was, in essence, the same man who'd somehow missed the London Eye while staring at it, she wasn't even surprised.

He went first, carefully taking the steps one at a time. Once on the first landing, he stopped and crouched down to inspect the footprints a bit more closely. She didn't follow his lead, instead made sure she had a clear view of downstairs and upstairs so nothing would be able to sneak up on them.

For the first time that day, she wished she had a gun. Then she dismissed the idea as quickly as possible. If she'd had her gun, she might have shot him instead of giving him a headache. Maybe his revulsion towards firearms wasn't as quaint as her dad made it seem whenever the issue came up in conversations.

When he stood back up, his knees creaked and he stared at them in something akin to shock. Rose had to actually bite her lips to stop the giggles. With a pretend-glare and a big grin, he went on, up the second flight of stairs, taking again only one step at a time. For someone who usually took two in one stride, this was actually noteworthy, Rose thought. He was either tired or being especially careful.

Maybe both.

On the first floor, the corridor spread to the right and left, one leading to another closed door and the other towards a second intersection. It was dark in here, darker even than in the hallway. Only the diffuse light from downstairs reached the closed door and a hint of more light came from the left side of the intersection. She could hear noises from there, low squeaks and screeches.

Slowly, they crept in that direction, backs against the wall. As they neared the intersection, Rose could see the sign on the wall, apparently forgotten or just left behind because no-one cared about it. Two arrows, the one to the right said 'General Practice Dr. C. Ingram, MD' and the one to the left 'Dental Surgery Dr M. Malcow, S Erobroy, D. Singh'.

Rose suppressed a hysterical snort. _'See, Mom? Told you there were monsters at the dentist!'_


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Text

The whole way up, he'd felt the Millie-thing's contentment. It was excited and sometimes possessive, hungry but less than it had been. She – it? – was clearly eating, and it wasn't alone; he felt that much. But there was no deeper feeling to base any plan of action on. He'd have preferred to get to know it better, understand its motives and somehow find a way to use those for his purpose, but there really seemed to be nothing beyond hunger and the desire to not be hungry anymore.

He knew that feeling. It was fairly recent, had started only one regeneration ago. Oh, well… not his regeneration, of course. The Doctor's. When he'd been a big-nosed bloke from somewhere up north, he'd wandered through time on Earth, at one point starving himself along with the humans during the Thirty Years War. Not through all thirty years. But he'd felt the need to share the pain of those people around him, just so he would physically be as close to breaking as he felt mentally after what he'd done with his planet.

It hadn't quite worked. But as an experience, it had been interesting.

At the second intersection, right beneath the directional plaques to the doctor's offices, he held up his hand and then motioned Rose to get to ground-level. He did the same, and carefully, he sneaked further on hands and knees. The stinging in his palms and the slight burn on his kneecaps reminded him of doing similar activities earlier, but luckily the immense _pull_ in his mind was close to non-existent.

He could hear Rose copy his movements and felt a wave of incredible fondness and admiration wash over him. She had always been amazing, but even if he didn't exactly trust Torchwood as an organization, he had to admit the training she was undergoing did fantastic things to her body and the way she was able to move.

_Really not the time!_ he chastised himself and carefully used his fingertip to give the door in front of him enough of a nudge to open it wide enough to see through. He froze then, listening for changes beyond his own heartbeat _ba-bumping_ in his chest. But neither sound nor emotions changed, and he continued into the practice.

Even after years of disuse, the unique smell of dentistry hung in the walls and the ripped-apart carpet. In here, the windows were less barred and light spilled into the corridor from inside the adjourning rooms. To his right was a small, open area, fenced off by an old, chest-high, broken and spray-paint-covered desk. Probably the reception. Across from the desk was one room, door missing from the hinges apart from two big shards of glass still attached to them. The rest of the once-opaque glass-door was scattered across the room beyond and out into the corridor the two of them were in, and he realized they'd have to walk from here on. Would probably be better anyway, the dog's position they were in wouldn't leave them much chance of running from the things.

The room the door had once protected was filled with garbage, scraps, filthy things that looked like rags and old clothes but which he didn't want to examine any closer, faecal matter and a smell that completely overrode his gag-reflex and forced him to swallow very hard to not puke on the spot.

He heard Rose behind him, in much the same predicament. Somehow, he managed to get himself together and stood, careful not to make a sound. He pulled Rose up and the two of them continued sneaking inside. The noises from the alien things were getting louder but they didn't seem to move their position. His mental link still didn't provide warning, so he kept on hoping they were undiscovered.

Left of the disgusting room was another door, this one made of wood. It had, like everything, some indecipherable and frankly bloody awful graffiti on it and when he pushed against it, it was locked. Huh.

A locked door in a disused and completely devastated dentist-office? Did seem suspicious. From Rose's raised eyebrow, she had caught the implications. Silently, she mouthed _'Break in?_. He thought, then put his ear to the wood and listened hard. When nothing, not even a hint of a breath or movement reached him, he shook his head. They could check this out later.

Across the corridor, on the right of the reception, was another room, this one open. It was rather small, maybe a break-room or for administrative purposes – he didn't know enough about medical practices on Earth, and nothing at all about them on _this_ Earth to say. Whatever it had been, now it was filled with soft material, cloth and clothes and foam-mattresses and pillows and pretty much anything remotely squishy. It didn't smell bad, in fact it smelled familiar. A lingering scent of … something, he couldn't quite grasp it. A tap on the shoulder, then Rose was there and he bent lower to let her whisper in his ear. _"Smells like Tony's room. Like… kids. Sleepy. You know?"_

Oh, right! It did have the unmistakable odour of a child's room, a little sweaty with a hint of peanut and something distinctly human. Even as human himself, he could recognize it. Underneath it was, as was all over this building, the cloying scent of mildew and dust.

_'Bedroom?'_ Rose mouthed, and he followed her line of sight. Two piles of soft material were well… piled in the middle of the room, the indent in their centre suggesting them to be nest-type beds. These were the only two nests, so either there were only two creatures, or more beds were to be found in one of the other rooms.

That, or the nests usually contained more than one of the things. How would he know if this species huddled together in one big thing-pile in their nests?

After a cursory inspection that didn't turn up anything useful but also at least nothing dangerous, they stepped silently back into the corridor. The hook in his brain was vibrating, and he stopped Rose with a hand on her shoulder, fingertips to her lips. He waited for something more. Something at least useful!

It only vibrated. How was 'vibrating' an emotion? It felt like he had a fly inside his mind, buzzing against the windows again and again. Noisy and annoying. Was that a distraction? Was that thing trying to stop him feeling its emotions so the other one – or more than one – could try to overpower them? Then, the vibration turned into a deep-seated feeling of hunger. It had just eaten, hadn't it? How could it be hungry… Ah. Not that kind of hunger.

He wasn't quite sure if he wanted to find the thing and its partner in flagranti or if he'd rather not. Pro: they would be occupied. Con: he would feel along with the Millie-thing.

Shuddering, he mouthed 'it wants to procreate' to Rose. She didn't get it, so he mouthed 'sex!'. Which she did get, but her dubious look and her question of 'Now?' made it clear she still didn't understand.

Pointing to the last door at the end of another, even narrower corridor behind which their little people-eating aliens had to be, he mouthed 'Them!'.

It was making him feel queasy that they were this close to the things and hadn't yet encountered any opposition or real problems. He knew instinctively that whatever was behind that half-ajar door was bad, and he still didn't have a clue how to solve his problem with the empathic connection. Which in itself was pretty bad.

Rose took point now and slowly creeped to the door. She bent down to peak through the gap but couldn't see enough, as she pushed it wider just a little bit. He'd stayed standing and then he heard her suck a sharp breath at the sight in the room.

He'd seen too much, he realized, to even be surprised.

* * *

Whatever last lingering sympathy Rose had left for the Millie-thing vanished. In the room, no telling what it once had been apart from the linoleum-flooring that pointed towards an examination-room or surgery, two of the aliens were feasting.

The only good thing about the sight was that there were just the two. The bad thing was everything else.

Millie had her back to them, her pale, matted hair making her easily recognizable. The second alien was a sharp contrast to the Millie-thing, in terms of looks. Where Millie was pale, clearly white, more-or-less blonde and looked about six, the second one was taller – if it had been human, maybe ten, not older than twelve. It seemed as gender-neutral as Millie had seemed at the first glance, maybe female, maybe male. Its skin was darker, eyes dark and hair jet-black, straight, medium length, features shaped to appease the human instinct of protection and caring.

But any positive emotions towards these child-like beings were completely overshadowed by the fact that they were gnawing on a human body. Their sharp teeth ripped into the flesh of the unclothed corpse in front of them, tearing out chunks of meat, chewing quickly and swallowing. Their faces where covered in blood, as was pretty much everything in the room.

Rose had to swallow another wave of nausea as she saw the walls and understood that what she'd assumed was simple dirt and spray-paint was, in fact, dried blood.

She could see areas where bloody fingers had swept over the wallpaper, leaving long marks and signs of struggle and death.

Slow death. Those fingers-smears where too far apart to come from those … _things_. As she was trying to keep her stomach on the inside, she spotted the reason the Doctor had indicated those things wanted to have sex. 'Millie' kept glancing up from the meal and staring at the bigger thing every now and then, which stared back with a distinctly interested gleam.

When 'Millie' finally offered a piece of meat and the other one refused, the Millie-thing sagged in disappointment. No mental hook was necessary to understand _that_. She felt the Doctor tense beside her, suddenly, and at the same second she saw the Millie-thing twist around with a snarl, up on its legs much quicker than a real child could ever be.

Its teeth were red now, and the lips a grotesque copy of a demented clown's smile.

"Don't let them touch you!" the Doctor shouted, and quickly grabbed the door to close it and keep the aliens inside the room. It was much harder than anticipated, something was wedged underneath it and other things - _'bones'_ she realized, _'human bones!'_ \- got in the way. It left a gap, where the arm of the darker alien just about lunged through. Rose grabbed the door-handle as well, pushing with all her might to keep it closed while the Doctor moaned right next to her, clearly in pain. "Agh, it's… ow, it's so angry, so furious, it hurts!"

The narrow hallway that had seemed quite impractical for sneaking, as it forced them to walk behind each other was now playing to their advantage. Beside the crack between door and frame, there was no way for anything through to them, and so far it seemed the Millie-thing and the Other-thing were successfully contained.

Sure, there were arms and hands clutching at the door and the little things were much stronger than they'd appeared, but with both their weight against the wood, Rose and the Doctor could hold it in position.

"What now?" She growled, trying once more to push the door closed completely. "Any good ideas? Because I'm not sure we can keep this up for long."


	14. Chapter 14

_Oh, just as a notice: it gets quite a bit violent from here. Sorry... (no, I'm not)_

* * *

There was utter fury inside his head. A storm of anger and rage hurled inside his mind, whirling his thoughts into chaos and disorder. Had the thing been satisfied and more or less happy before, it was now completely out of control for wanting to kill, kill, kill, kill. The small hands through the gap were still reaching to touch, and he felt its desire and need to do so, to subdue them and then to murder them and mutilate them and kill, kill, kill, kill. The actual noise on the outside, the squeals and screams and shrieks dug into his ears and stabbed upwards behind his eyes.

He gasped and grit his teeth to keep something of a structure inside his own head. It would be easy to be swept away with it and just answer in kind, mirror the fury and act upon it. It took immense effort to keep control.

"No," he hissed through his clenched jaws. "But… I'm pretty sure reasoning with them is out of the question." Still, he tried. "Hey, you! Uh… Millie and friend! Listen, I'm… I might be able -_we_ might be able to help you, maybe there's something you need beside eating humans? We could see if we can arrange something?"

But all he got was more screeches. If they were talking, he didn't understand.

"I think we should just… oh – wait…" He'd just wanted to suggest they run for it, and damn the hook in his mind. He'd be able to survive, somehow, and he'd had far, far worse. Being burned inside-out from a sun, for example. But there was something behind the pure anger, some underlying reason for the fury which drove the two beings so mad.

There was something important in this building, something… precious. Something to be protected.

"I think … Oh god, Rose. They're protecting a nest!"

"What do you mean? Like in the other room?"

"No, I mean _nest_. With eggs! They're protecting their offsprings!"

This was bad. This was really, really bad. If these aliens ate humans, and nothing else, there was no way they could be allowed to walk free on Earth. They weren't polar-bears that also ate humans if they could get one but which were native to this planet. These things weren't, that much was fact, and they couldn't be allowed to spread.

They'd have to either send them to space or back home – somehow – or destroy them. Kill them. With their children.

He felt sick. He stared at Rose and saw equal revulsion and horror on her face, in her beautiful eyes. She'd come to the same conclusion, and with the way she stared down the hallway while still pressing her weight against the door, he suspected she was already thinking about what to do.

They needed information. Even though his parent had said he was the equivalent of a rage-filled, bloodthirsty conqueror, which was already highly exaggerated, he wouldn't go and butcher babies just because their parents were human-eating aliens! He didn't know anything about these, they weren't the Racnoss, he had no further information about their intentions.

And there was only one place he could get them.

"Rose, we need to … I need to understand them. I can't… we can't do anything now, as it is. I need to… talk to them."

"How? If you didn't understand them before, how will you…" Realization swept over her features. "Oh. Oh no, you don't!" She glared at him, teeth bared as if she would bite him into submission. "They're thralls! They'll just … enthral you!"

"We can … we can do something about that. Just… we have to. I… what else can we do? If they're sentient enough to reason with, I need to find a way. If they're not… well. We can't act before we know for sure. We can't destroy their nest without knowing if it's really necessary?" He was pleading for her understanding. He would need her help, after all.

All the while, he kept his gaze on her face, watching the emotions flitter across. Denial, stubbornness, determination. Pain, fear and empathy. Because above all, Rose cared about life and people and living things. It had made her easy prey for the Millie-thing, after all. In the end, realization crawled into her eyes, acceptance that there really was no other way.

She swallowed. "Okay. But how can we do that?"

He took a deep breath. This would be difficult.

* * *

Since they couldn't let the thralls touch them before everything was ready, they had to imprison them in the room. It had taken them all their strength to finally close the door for good, wedge it shut and for further protection shove a board underneath the handle and once done, the Doctor had rushed downstairs and around the house to ensure that there was no way out the windows for their prisoners.

For once, luck was on their side. When he came back up, Rose had already made her way through all the rooms in the office, trying to find something that would be of help.

First, they had to take a look into the locked room, which turned out to not be locked at all but rather wedged shut with a sliver of wood under the door. They found six eggs inside – Rose's mind stopped processing for a while, imagining these child-sized aliens somehow delivering narrow, shell-covered _eggs_ \- which were bedded on soft material and safely surrounded by pillows and cloth. It hurt a little, the way they were clearly cared for and protected against chill and the outside-influences.

They left the room otherwise undisturbed.

The first room, with the broken glass-door, had been impossible to enter; the smell was too much for her. Even the Doctor had balked and the view from the door inside was bad enough. It was more or less the garbage-dump for the thralls, faeces and dirt and used and soiled cloth and clothes. Bones. She didn't want to get a closer look at the bones, but there were plenty, now that she'd had time to really look.

The thralls kept shrieking and scratching and thumping the door of their prison, and it hurried them on.

From the sleeping-room they collected long rags which the Doctor tore into strips and tested for strength, then twisted some into sturdy ropes. Rose tried the last room they had skipped investigating before. It was fairly big, covered with the usual graffiti and mildew and dust. There was a big window which let the light inside, open to the elements because the glass had long-since been shattered. The walls were bare and the floor was that easy-to-clean linoleum which was native to every dental practice Rose had ever been to. What made it perfect, apart from the size, was the extra-feature the former owners had left to rot.

In the middle, bolted to the ground, was the familiar and dreaded dentist-chair. Without electricity, it couldn't be operated but it was solid and firm. Covered in dirt and slightly damp, the seating was ripped in places with the filling spilling out, but she carefully sat down to test it.

It would be perfect for their plan and yet she shuddered in memory of her dentist-experiences. She'd always had great teeth and hadn't needed fillings or anything bad, but the idea of a dentist still had her balk and refuse reason.

"Doctor, I think I found the perfect place for this," she called and heard him come over. As she raised her voice, the thralls increased their high-pitched screams. It was getting on her nerves.

"Oh, this is brilliant!" He grinned, clearly not damaged by dentist-appointments in his past. "Here, this should be enough to bind us up proper." He took a seat and wriggled in place, testing the hand-rails for strength and endurance. "Perfect. And quite comfy, I have to say. Much better than anything I would have thought of. What's this for?"

"Have you never been to a dentist?" she asked, curious.

"Oh, it's for teeth?" He opened his mouth and leaned back a bit, but the chair wasn't reclined and so it looked just stupid. Rose grinned and snorted.

"Yes. Normally, the chair gets flattened, the dentist can move it up or down and then they can work inside your mouth without damaging their backs and without you having the chance to jerk your head away."

"Brilliant idea! Time Lords don't get holes in their teeth. I wonder if I have to see a dentist sometime in the future."

Possibly. Not so much because he neglected his hygiene – he was adorably fond of brushing his teeth – but the way he kept riding his bike, it was only a matter of time until he hit the pavement with his mouth and would need implants. "You can see this as a practice-run, then. "

He stood up and moved around the room. Now that they weren't sneaking or trying to hide, his usual bouncy enthusiasm was back full force. Even hungry, wet and utterly dirty, he had energy to spare and she felt a stab inside her chest. With a swift grab, she halted his restlessness and pulled him down to give him a kiss which he returned quickly. Rose felt him melt against her embrace and she held him even closer, trying to say with her lips what her voice wouldn't get out the right way. That she loved him, that he should be careful, that she would do anything - _anything_ to keep him safe and that she wouldn't give up on him, ever. Maybe he didn't understand the finer points, but that didn't matter. He knew, after all.

She felt him gently push against her shoulder to stop their snogging-session, and reluctantly she let him go. Right. Later. "Do you really want to be the one in this chair? I though Millie would be better, because she'd be easier to keep down in this."

"Uh…" his voice was shot and croaky and there was a dazed look in his eyes. She loved that she could do this to him. "No." He cleared his throat. "The thrall is much smaller and lighter. If … if it gets a hold of me, I'll be much more dangerous than it can ever be. We'll tie it to the chair I found at the reception. It's big and has wheels, you should be able to keep Millie on it without a problem."

"Okay. Good. So… how do we get her here, on that chair, without the other one escaping as well?"

He pulled her along to the bed-room, where he showed her two large, sturdy tarps like those they used on trucks to keep the load secure which he'd unearthed somewhere from the piles. "We'll spread it in front of the door. I can hold it outstretched from one wall to the other, and we only have to fix it to the ground so it can't slip underneath. I'll wrap it up and bind the tarp, and we have a big sack to transport. It doesn't really matter which one gets out – if it's not Millie, we'll just catch it on the second go and dump the other one back inside."

"Huh. That … sounds actually quite reasonable." He waggled his eyebrows and grinned, and she had to laugh about the ridiculousness of the situation. It was like catching feral cats, except a lot more dangerous. "Okay. So… how do we get her onto the chair?"

They went back to the chair-room, bringing the wheely-chair along. After a few more discussions and a quick lecture on knots, they prepared the tarp. Rose was to open the door and she had to be quick so only one of the things would slip through the gap before she'd shove it closed again, then she'd have to help with their prey and after they'd secured the thrall on the chair, she would have to tie the Doctor to the dental chair.

* * *

Surprisingly, their daft plan went really well. They'd caught only one thrall, and it had been Millie. The screams from the prison-room had increased to ear-shattering levels, but it had calmed down when there had been a muffled answer from their bundle. The Doctor had pulled it along into their chair-room where Rose had quickly wrapped two of their cloth-ropes around its middle. They'd placed the thrall on the chair, then tied it to the backrest and only then did they uncover Millie's head and arms enough to secure the limbs in ways that would leave it impossible to escape.

"Good," the Doctor said, testing the bindings a fourth time. "I'm sure this'll hold. Now… let's get me fixed up, then." He swung into the chair and started to tie his legs to the foot-rest. She knew it was necessary – if he had enough leverage and will to break away, he'd either succeed or injure himself severely. Still, it made her feel queasy to see him bound to what for her had always been the epitome of a torture-device.

And it didn't get better when it was her turn, wrapping one more rope around his midriff and then fixing the left wrist to the arm-rest.

"A bit higher. No, wrap the whole cloth higher, don't just tie the wrist. It's much easier to keep me fixed when there's more than a narrow fixture, and it's also a lot more comfortable in case I actually fight. If the rope's not long enough, just use a second one at the elbow. I've got enough cloth for us to use."

She shuddered. Hearing him talk calmly about the best way to tie him down increased her queasiness to levels of real discomfort. That she saw him swallow hard when she did as he told her didn't help at all.

Apart from his instruction, they didn't talk much anymore. Rose kept tying and binding and knotting, the thralls kept shrieking and he kept telling her in a low, soothing voice how to bind the rope for his right wrist. "Best use a bit for padding, then tie the fix-rope. No, not the black one. The red one is the sturdiest of these, it'll work best. Wrap it around the wrist – bit tighter, yes, like this – and take both ends and tie them to the arm-rest. No, I need more room, leave it longer. Wait…" He tested the range of his forearm. It was tight enough that he couldn't reach across to untie himself or the thrall, which would have to be placed close enough for him to touch its skin. "Perfect! Now… let's hope this works."

He swallowed, hard, and she saw him shudder. On impulse, Rose leaned into him, softly stroking his hair and face. She kissed him, on the lips, then on the temple and forehead. "I love you," she whispered. "This'll be okay. I'll protect you; I promise."

The Doctor let some of the tension go and breathed hard and deliberate. Then, he leaned into her touch. "I know. Sorry."

"'s okay. You're doing a lot better than I would do at a real dentist." They smiled and even if it was a little forced, it was still real and good and beautiful.

"Okay. Let's do this."

* * *

To say he didn't like being restrained would probably count as British understatement, he thought as he tried to calm his racing heart. 'Hate' would be adequate. 'Loathing' came very close to what he was feeling.

He'd always strongly disliked being restricted in his movement, even from early age back on Gallifrey, and his adventures with different types of restraints hadn't really helped. Now it was clear that being human made it a lot more difficult to compartmentalize his aversion and he had to fight for control. It didn't matter that he was perfectly safe, that it had been his idea, that Rose would be there all the time and if it got too hard, he could just ask to be released and it would happen. That he felt the Millie-thrall's hatred and revulsion about its own containment in his head alongside his own emotions made everything so much worse.

As the Doctor, babbling had always been a way to distract everyone around him along with himself, but now, here, his mouth wouldn't work in the right way. In fact, he would have preferred to keep his lips sealed so no accidental plea for release would fall out.

But that couldn't work, so he cleared his head from memories and instead looked at Rose and put on another smile. It was a bit wobbly, but it would do. "Remember. Don't touch it, no matter what happens. If you need to get it away from me, just push the chair. No skin-contact. I can't help you if you're not careful, and I really don't want to be eaten today."

"I know," she said, slightly impatient. They had been over this more than twice, but it was very important, after all. He'd rather be overly cautious than make a mistake, at least in this situation. "I'll get her, we'll be fine."

Rose went to the wall where they'd parked the Millie-thrall and rolled it over towards his chair. If looks could kill, he and Rose would be smoking cinders on the floor, maybe a pile of ash. Mille-thrall was murderous, and he felt wave over wave of anger and fury flow into his mind. Maybe it wasn't too late to just kill those things and leave?

With a decisive shake, he reached with his loose arm over and touched Millie's skin, and its eyes turned luminous and beautiful and innocent right before his own eyes. _Help me, please, Mister. I need your help, can you help me?_

The words were clear and he could feel it digging even deeper, trying to find purchase in his brain to lodge a compulsion or any kind of sympathetic feeling. It must be instinctive or the thrall would have realized that in this situation, he couldn't actually _do_ anything. That, or maybe it was plain stupid.

Now, telepathic connection established, he had to get on with it. He didn't even know if he had any psychic ability left as a human, hadn't ever tried and wouldn't even know how. The only reason he thought this might work was that he hadn't been enthralled when he'd grabbed that thing to keep it away from Rose, and looking back, that was maybe not enough evidence to base success on.

But they didn't have any better choices left.

"My name is the Doctor," he spoke to the thrall. "Is your name really Millie? Shall I call you that?"

_Help me, Mister, please. That woman is dangerous, she wants to hurt me. She might hurt you, too, please, can't you make her let us go? I don't like this_

"Millie, stop this. I know what you want, or at least I know what you're doing. I could help you, or Rose could. We can try to get you back home – don't you want to go back home?"

_Home is dead._

He was surprised. This was the first time the thrall had reacted at all to his thoughts, not just tried to get him to release it or otherwise capture him. "Why? Why is it dead? Was it destroyed?"

_Home is dead. I want my mommy – are you my mommy?_

"No, I'm not your mommy and you know that I'm not. We saw you eat someone! I won't be fooled into thinking you're a real child but I'm still willing to help if that's possible!" He felt its worry and maybe a hint of fear. Why would it be afraid when before there had been only anger? "What are you afraid of?"

_I want my mommy. My … sister is alone, I want my sister._

"That's your sister in there? That… no, no. It can't be. One of you has to be male, or your eggs won't be fertile. If you can even lay eggs without fertilization… Are you the male? You are, aren't you?"

"Doctor?" Rose interrupted, clearly worried. "What are you doing, I can't hear a thing. Also, you're shaking."

Surprised, he looked away from Millie and it felt like his head had been stuck in one position with glue. It took a lot more effort to turn it than it should. "Ah." His hand was indeed shaking, and quite badly, too. He took it away from Millie's skin and it was like Velcro becoming unstuck. "Am… Am I talking now?"

Rose nodded. "Yeah. What's she saying?"

"Not much, sadly. Just… like before. Not female, by the way. It wants its mommy, which is a lie, I can tell – these two are adult. It said its home is dead. That was the only thing apart from the thralling that I got. I'll have to try some more."

"I'm not sure this is the best idea… You turn pale as a sheet when you're inside that head."

He sighed. "If I don't, we can't let them stay here." He tried to make her see, but it wasn't necessary because she understood quite clearly what was at stake. With a sigh, he grabbed for the Millie-thrall once more. "Just give me a bit more time. We could find a way."

Smiling, he reached for her with his other hand but the restraint held him back. He'd forgotten, actually forgotten, and the reminder of his situation wasn't really helping. A short rush of fear was all he allowed himself before he concentrated again.

Something… something tickled inside his head but when he tried to see what it was, it slipped away. It felt a bit like… understanding? Satisfaction? Ah, it was probably nothing.

"Millie. Can't we find an agreement? Something like…Oh, I don't know. You only eating animals and we let you continue? Something like that?"

_It's cold. I don't like the cold. And the ties are too tight. Please, can't you loosen them? Just a little? I can barely breathe._

"The restraints are fine. I know they are, they're tight but you can breathe. Deal with it, they won't get off. Now – to the agreement. Don't you want your eggs to survive? You know we can't let them if you keep eating people! That's not the way things work around here. Well… mostly. You know how it is, the occasional lunatic and all that. Luna – it's the name of the moon, did you know? Probably not, being from another world and all that. It's a beautiful name and oh no – no no no -what are you doing? Millie?!" He was babbling, inside his head, trying to act unafraid so nobody would see how scared he actually was. But there was no reason to be afraid.

Was there?

_I'm so alone._ Its eyes were enormous and so deep blue. Blue… Tardis-blue. Blue like the walls on Arcadia's main library, like the sky on Merola in the Orion Nebula. Blue, so blue. _I don't like being alone. Do you?_

"Being alone is … it's not nice. I understand, but you have your mate. You're not alone."

_All the others are gone. Only me. Alone. And I'm scared. I don't like being tied up. I never liked it, it's nasty. Nasty things happen. Bad things. Terrible things._

"I … I understand. But this is necessary, I'm sorry. We need to talk to you, and this is the only way."

_Necessary? Necessary isn't good. Necessary means people hurt you. I heard it a lot, before, and there's always pain later. I don't like pain. Do you like pain?_

"Of course not, nobody does. I… I can't say I'm overly fond of pain and being tied up, so I understand. But still… We won't hurt you, I promise. Rose… she would… I…" He turned around and looked but he couldn't see her. Where was Rose?

Just then, she stepped back into the room and he felt a wave of relief. She was there, and everything would be good.

_But what if that's not Rose? What if she's gone and someone took her place? Can you be sure that's Rose?_

"Of course I can! Rose…" But could he be sure? She'd been gone, probably only for a minute, but he hadn't seen her leave, maybe she had been taken? There were enough things out there that could take her form. Or even take her body. Just … think of Cassandra, she'd stolen her body!

If Cassandra had him restraint, that couldn't be good. That would be really bad. Really, really bad…. Even worse if it was something else.

_Help us, please? I want to go home, that's all I want. Just home. Outside. Help us. Please._

"Of course. I'll help you. I will, I'll get you out, I promise. Trust me."

* * *

Once Rose had stepped back into the room, she'd known it had been a mistake. She hadn't wanted to leave but the Other-thrall had stopped screeching and for a while now, she'd heard it rhythmically thump against the door. She'd been afraid it would break free, and she'd asked the Doctor if he would be alright.

She'd _asked him_! And he'd nodded. Of course she'd taken the Millie-thrall away, rolled her – no, him apparently – out of reach.

And there he still was. Still at the side of the room, but the Doctor was staring over, right at his face. He only glanced at her for a second, then his gaze was back on Millie, his pupils blown wide, his loose arm outstretched towards the thrall and his face pale and sweaty.

Hurriedly, she went over to him. "Doctor! What happened, talk to me. Tell me what's wrong!"

He didn't speak but flinched at her touch. His skin was icy and covered in a fine sheen of cold sweat and she could actually see his pulse at the neck. Body rigid, he was still trembling. If from cold or from the effort of keeping his limbs stiff and motionless, she couldn't tell.

"Doctor! Look at me, it's me. Rose, come on, look!" Rose grabbed his head and turned it, away from Millie and towards her. There was no recognition, only trepidation that was transforming into full-blown fear right in front of her.

He jerked away from her grip and started to move and moan. "Get out, get out, need to get out, no, no no no no no no no no please no no no…"

A steady litany of 'no', barely whispered but enough for her to hear. Nothing she did helped. No kiss, no steady stroking or pinching his skin. When she slapped him, his fear got even worse and he gasped and moaned and pleaded with her to let him go.

The ties groaned and creaked, but they held. Which wasn't as reassuring as it should be, because he was straining so hard against them that she could see the skin rub raw already on his wrists. The more he fought, the more panicky he got and the more he pleaded. 'No no no no no no no', all the time, all the time.

"Stop it!" she yelled at the Millie-thing. "Stop this, enough!" Rose jumped over to the thrall, remembering at the last moment not to touch it. She grabbed the chair and rolled it out of the room, down the corridor and put it at the furthest corner in the office. Then she ran back in to the Doctor, but he was not better. If possible, he was even worse.

Instead of pleading, he was whimpering, tears streaming down his face. Still, he was fighting and shivering and bathed in cold sweat, and his eyes were stuck on the door where he'd last seen the Millie-thrall.

From the hallway and the prison-room came two wails of pure misery and pain, like the cries of human children who weren't just throwing temper-tantrums but were in actual distress. Her heart clenched at the sound, but for the Doctor it was even worse.

"No, no, don't. Don't make me do that, please! No! Susan! No, please, not her, not her… Not her, no, please, please, don't make me, I don't want to. I can't, I can't. No…"

"Doctor, shhhhh, listen, listen to me. I'm here, it's not real. It's all in the past, I'm sorry, but it's not real. They're … it's them, the thralls, they're doing this." She held him but it was awkward, so she climbed onto the chair and on his body, trying to cover every inch of him with her warmth. It wasn't working, though, it made him tense up even more and he tried to get away, get away from her.

His voice was shot from sorrow and pain, quiet and desperate. "Jenny! Please, not… she's just like me, just like me. Not her, why, no … why, why, she could have done so much, we could have seen the world. Planets to see, people to save. No!"

Rose cried, pleading with him but whatever she said, whatever she did, it wasn't helping. Whatever that thing had done, it had him in its grip.

Firmly.

She would have to make it let go.

Her voice was shaking and she felt tears run over her cheeks, but she had to, had to do something, had to get him out. "I'm sorry, I'll be back. I'll fix this, I promise. I will."

One more kiss on his cheek, but she wished she hadn't. Feeling him flinch away from her, trying to get away hurt immensely. With a deep breath, she pulled herself together and marched out of the room and back to where Millie was sitting. It hadn't moved, though she could see that it had tried to get free.

"Stop this, right now. Last chance, _stop!_" she yelled as loud as she could.

The thrall turned its eyes from the direction of the chair-room and looked at her, and there was pure menace and … smugness in them. Enough to let her lose every last bit of sympathy. Rose grabbed a long, narrow but sturdy wooden thing, maybe a piece from a shelf, and prodded Millie, hard and repeatedly. "I said stop it! Let him go! Last chance, I'm warning you! I've fought Cybermen and Daleks, and I'm not afraid of a stupid little …" her voice betrayed her, but she couldn't stop now. "…_Thing_, so stop before it's too late!"

The thrall stared at her and bared its teeth, and then it bent back its head and started that horrible, horribly lonely, desperate wail once more.

That was enough. With a yell, she swung the wood at Millie's head, one time, twice and maybe more. It wouldn't stop wailing, though, it wouldn't stop. "Stop, stop, why won't you stop, just stop!"


	15. Chapter 15

She wouldn't be able to say how often she'd swung until Rose understood that the noise wasn't coming from Millie. That nothing would ever come from Millie ever again, that it was dead.

With a cry, she let the piece of wood go and scrambled away from the bloody remains, backwards until she hit the counter and then turned over and threw up everything she'd ever eaten in her life.

Everything hurt. Her stomach from the repeated heaving, the cuts in the palms from having gripped the wood so hard and her everything from the realization what she'd just done. Her mind skittered away from the memory and she refused to look back at it. She tried to deafen herself to the terrible sounds Other-thrall was making, but only when she remembered that she'd left the Doctor alone for quite a while and couldn't hear him at all was she able to stand up and stumble back on weak legs.

But when she reached the room, there was no change. He was still pleading whispers and crying, still murmuring names and 'no' and 'sorry' and 'please', still wouldn't respond to her, was still trying to twist himself free and she couldn't, she couldn't, not anymore. With a sob, she slid down along the wall and pulled her knees up so she could bury her face in them. Her arms wound around her head and ears, and she let herself go because if even this wasn't enough, if he was gone and would stay this way, she didn't know anything anymore.

* * *

Pain. Agony in his head, everything hurting, everything pain, pain, pain. First blinding white and sharp, then a dull, harsh throbbing with intermitting bouts of agonizing twinges. Everything hurt and he was so alone. So cold and dark.

Cold.

There was a snap in the darkness, a blinding light and a sharp spike behind his eyes.

Then nothing.

* * *

He woke to the sight of a disgustingly-brown, sagging ceiling and dull, throbbing hurt. Aching wrists and legs and arms, and the awful dry feeling of having cried way too much and too long. There was also the matter of his burning throat and together with the sensation of being fixed in position, he felt his heart beat painfully against his ribs.

It took a while of controlled breathing to get himself back together and to remember where he was and what had happened.

Still tied to the chair. Not good. "Rose?" he asked, because she wasn't there and he clearly recalled that she was supposed to be by his side. His voice was completely shot and he had to try again. "Rose?"

A sniff. Carefully, because ouch, he moved his upper body so he could look around the room better. There, beside the door, was a huddled pile of hair and knees and legs that moved suspiciously like someone did when crying. "Rose?" Now he was clearly worried and his effort to get rid of the bindings grew. "Please, Rose, talk to me."

He couldn't get free, and he suspected that he'd tried for a while already, though under completely different circumstances. "Rose, I can't… I can't help you; you have to let me loose. Can you do that?"

She shook, but after a few seconds, she finally, finally lifted her head a little. "Doctor?"

"Yes." He wanted to say more, something reassuring or witty, but his head was empty and he still felt like a wet noodle on a clothing-line. "Cut me free?"

"I… I'm not sure I should."

He shuddered. Couldn't help it, the idea of having to stay even one minute longer in this position was extremely unpleasant. Biting his lip, he tried to pull himself together, trying to work through what must have happened.

"Uh… it… got me, didn't it?" He didn't remember very much.

Rose nodded. Her face was tear-streaked and her eyes red from crying. There were blood-spatters on her forehead and cheek, but he didn't want to point that out. Didn't have to have a Time Lord brain to understand what she'd done. "You… you were …" He saw her tremble at the memory, and he didn't want to know what she'd seen.

Even with his addled brain, he realized what must have happened to him. Somehow, the empathic link had opened further and the thrall had been able to manipulate his own emotions, mirror his fear of restraint and amplify it, play with it, use it to its advantage. Judging from the way he felt, it must have been devastating to witness.

"I tried to just get it out of the room, but it didn't work. I…" She swallowed hard. "I killed it, but it didn't work. I don't know if I can let you go, because I'm not sure that's really you anymore. Nothing worked."

He desperately wanted to go to her, hold her, feel her, make her better. But he could do nothing, nothing at all, tied up as he was. With a deep exhale, he forced himself to sag into the disgusting chair. "We should probably find a good therapist when we get back."

Rose laughed at that, shaky and overly-loud, but she uncurled from her position on the floor. "Yeah, probably a good idea. Fine. I believe you." She didn't, that much was clear as she got closer. She was wary and scared, and flinched back when she touched him. It hurt inside, but he understood. She must have been through hell.

"Sorry," he muttered when she cringed the third time she connected with his arm while untying the knots, and then she stopped and stared at him.

"What are you apologizing for?"

Was that a trick-question? "Um…" There was quite a lot, actually. Convincing her that this was a good idea was on the top of the list, and then came things like getting her car stolen, forgetting the phone, forgetting their _date_ and everything that led to her having to kill the thrall to get him free. What he said, though, was "I'm making you uncomfortable."

For a moment, she looked at him as if he'd lost his mind, then grabbed his hand. Finally, _finally_ he got to touch her. It felt so good, so right, so important! She sank to her knees and leaned against his leg, kissed his hand and opened it so she could lean into his palm. This time, his shudder was pure relief.

"You silly mug, I was afraid you didn't want me to touch you! You… very much didn't before."

"Well, in that case, my apology is for not making it clear that I very much want you to touch me. Very much. A lot. Please?" He didn't care that it sounded needy. He _was_ needy, needed her close and he wanted to hold her and cuddle her and embrace her so she would be protected forever. As it was, he was still tied up. "But get the bloody ties off, first. I really don't like them."

Quickly she did and finally, he could hold her the right way. She helped him off the awful chair – not looking forward to a dentist-appointment now, that was certain – and then they sank to the floor together, leaning against the wall curled up into each other's arms and just breathing, breathing, getting themselves into a semblance of 'fine'.

They would be fine, he knew. But it might take a bit longer.


	16. Chapter 16

In his arms, Rose felt safe and warm. She was wet, cold and hungry and hurt deep inside her soul from what she'd seen and done. What would the Doctor, the real one, think about her now? She wanted to sob, but couldn't even manage that.

On the floor against the wall, warm against his chest with his heart beating a steady, normal rhythm, she slowly started feeling better. Or maybe it was just the numbness spreading in her bones, sucking out the tension and fear of the last … hours? And leaving her empty and emotionless.

They would still have to get back home, though going to that party was clearly out of the question. She felt him swallow and shiver, probably from the cold. The clothes of both of them were still damp from the rain, but his were sweat-drenched as well now. Noticing the raw skin on his wrist, she took his hand and tried to wish it better, kissed the mark and wished for something clean to bind it. It looked painful. "Sorry about this," she murmured. "It will probably scar." So clearly, she wasn't yet numb all over.

"Doesn't matter."

"But I… I put them there. I hurt you." She felt him move and looked up to see him gaze down on her, a soft smile on his face.

"You didn't, Rose. I promise, I don't mind some silly scars when you were the one to make them. Which you weren't, just to make that clear. I did that myself. Because I was stupid and thought I… well, because I was stupid, basically." He took a deep breath. "Maybe with these, I'll remember and won't attempt something so immensely foolish again."

Rose frowned. "No, wait. You couldn't have known it would be able to take control like this. And … you said it yourself. What other choice did we have? You were hooked to its mind, and the only other option would have been what I did anyway, but without even giving them a chance. We should always give them a chance, always. There's always a choice."

That's what the Doctor would say, wasn't it? 'There's always a choice'. Yes, there was. It wasn't always a good set of choices, and sometimes you made the wrong one. But pretending there was only one was cowardly and lazy. You had to know the options, find them, look for every way out that didn't lead to bloodshed. But sometimes, the right choice would still lead to death or destruction and sometimes you had to choose one death over another. The _Doctor_ knew about that, after all. Her Doctor hadn't done _this_ for base motives like proving some point or sating a superiority complex. He just hadn't wanted to kill the thralls. That couldn't be bad. And slowly Rose was realizing that even though killing the thrall might not – would not – meet the parallel Doctor's approval, he wasn't here and the options had been severely limited. It might take a while for her to come to terms with the action, but she would defend it nevertheless as the _right_ decision at the time. Maybe less violence would have been sufficient, but that would have required her to be aware of what she was doing and deliver pain deliberately and with clear goal. But she'd been out of her mind with worry, out of her wits with fear and panic, and she felt only relief at having her Doctor back with her.

They still weren't done, though, and she knew that the Doctor would _definitely_ disapprove of what they'd have to do next. He'd probably do it himself if he had to, but he'd disapprove of that choice anyway, Rose was sure.

She sighed and patted his chest so he would know that she was ready to get home and be done with all this.

* * *

Everything hurt. Time Lord healing was so much better than human healing, he decided. Being tense for such a long time had played havoc with his muscles and joints, and the ache had settled in and would probably not leave soon. Very annoying. Slowly, they untangled themselves and he gingerly got up from the floor.

Rose followed him up and shook out her hair. Bracing her shoulders, she visibly prepared herself for the next task and then went towards the doorway where a bloody piece of shelf leaned against the wall. She turned right, but he held her before she could walk on. This wasn't her task. He didn't have to say anything, just look at her and saw her understand. He turned around to look for a weapon, then reached for the wooden slat from Rose's hand. She didn't resist.

'Don't you dare, Doctor,' he thought as he walked along the narrow corridor towards the prison room. 'Don't you dare judge me for this!'

Bracing himself for an attack – wishing it, really – he undid the safety-measures for the door and, when nothing launched at him, he slipped inside.

It was the first time any of them set foot into this room. It was empty mostly, apart from the remains of some rag-clothed fellow on the floor and the blood spattered over the walls. It smelled coppery and ugly, of fear and despair and pain. And then there was the thrall.

It was still and silent, curled up in the corner of the room. Its eyes were big but empty, no anger or pleading or anything in there, really. It stared at the door as if it expected to see its mate walk through, but it didn't move and didn't seem to acknowledge him.

It looked so sad, so devastated. So alone.

He felt a lump in his throat. Should he say anything to it? Would it even understand? He looked at the wood in his hand, sharp spike on one side and blunt edge on the other. Could he really murder it like this? Was he that kind of man? _This_ kind of man?

But what were the options?

Leave it be? Let it roam around and eat people, lure them in with its terrifying power and kill them? It wouldn't stop, and it would be alone. There were no more on this planet, he was sure the Millie-thrall had told the truth even though it had been toying with his head. He was less certain about their world being 'dead', as that was so close to Gallifrey's fate that it could have easily been sucked from his own mind and used against him. But either way, it would be as alone as the last Time Lord, utterly lonely. It would have to realize that its eggs would be crushed, if it hadn't come to that conclusion already.

What if he just let it go?

What if this species was like Earth's lice and could reproduce without a male? Even if all of its eggs would turn out female, that wouldn't make a difference for their victims.

So what else? Imprison it forever on Earth, until it died alone and miserable, full of anger and hate?

Never to be touched?

Was it really his choice to make? He didn't have the right, did he? Reasoning wasn't a grand option with the thralls, and he doubted anyone else could even come as far as he had – so no way of communicating, all alone, locked away until the end of its time – or death. Those were the two options he allowed, considering their meal-plan.

One or the other.

Even if it ate humans, it didn't deserve to die alone. So miserable.

He kneeled down in front of it so he could look it in the eyes. He held out his hand and smiled, and the thrall finally reacted. Its head jerked and it looked at him, then at his hand. Carefully, it reached towards him, slowly and cautious.

Their fingertips touched and he felt the connection snap together, felt its loneliness and sorrow and the hunger, the ever-present hunger underneath everything. _'I am so, so sorry,'_ he said in his head, knowing it would understand, even if it might not care. _'I promise it won't hurt.'_

The wooden spike pierced her heart without much effort, a quick motion and a quick death. He'd been right. She had felt hardly a sting.

* * *

When he returned, he found Rose in front of the egg-room. She was pale and shivering, and everything in her posture said she wanted to be far, far away. He very much shared the emotion, but they couldn't leave like this. He touched her as he walked past, just a little caress, and he felt her response when she took his hand and followed. At the doorway, though, she stopped. Like she'd hit a wall, she couldn't take one more step and he turned and smiled and kissed her head and stepped into the room alone. Again, this wasn't her task. Not like this.

The eggs were just eggs. Not too big, rather slim and elongated and pale blue. He didn't know how far they were in their development, and frankly didn't care overly much. Still, he touched one of them. Maybe out of some deep-seated desire to hurt himself or maybe just because he wanted to know more, be aware at least of what he was doing. There was nothing, it was just an egg. No vibration, no feelings, no thoughts he could catch. Either they weren't conscient enough or just not telepathic, it didn't matter. Relief coursed through him at the cold, lifeless feeling of the shell.

Rose had her back to the door and swiftly, he swung the blunt side of the wooden slat against it, hoping one good hit would be enough to crack it. He wouldn't be able to do this if he had to bash them over and over.

His luck, battered and bruised as it was, held. The egg sported a sharp crack along its side, letting out a clear fluid that started wetting the sheets around it. Quickly, he continued with the other five and finally, finally, he could stop.

His mind was carefully blank.

After maybe a minute, or maybe a few seconds, or maybe an hour even, he felt Rose at his side, taking his hand. "C'm on. Let's leave. I want to go home."


	17. Chapter 17

Rose wouldn't be able to tell anyone how they got back to their home. If pressed, she could remember a lot of walking, some asking for the way, a stroll along the motorway and … a cab-ride? Maybe someone had picked them up. Though who in their right mind would pick up muddy, dirty, bloodied, miserable strangers, she couldn't say.

She was just glad someone had.

When she stood in front of their door and found her keys inside her jeans-pocket, she had to laugh long and hard and completely hysterical because it was such a silly thing. After all they'd experienced, her bloody house-keys were still in her trousers as if nothing had happened to them.

The Doctor had opened the door, shuffled her laughing body inside and closed it, then he'd gently led her to the bathroom. It was a good bathroom, spacious, fitting for the size of their flat. Pete had bought her the flat, or better he'd owned it all along and given it to her. She loved it, but now she remembered the dirty people on the street, the broken houses and homes, the misery even where the thralls hadn't reached yet. Should she feel ashamed for having so much? Because she didn't. All she did was feel glad.

The Doctor sat her down on the closed lid of the toilet and went to open the tab to let the water heat up. Then he went to his knees in front of her to take off her shoes, socks and then peeled her jeans off her legs. Panties, too. She shivered from the cold of her seat but it quickly warmed underneath her, as if there even was some body-heat left over. Next, he carefully, so tenderly, pulled her sogging-wet and blood-covered sweater over her arms and then her head, then removed t-shirt and bra until she was naked. She stared at her legs, bruised and scratched, then examined her arms dispassionately. Nothing too bad, she thought. The way she felt, she'd somehow expected to be covered in marks of evil, or at least so battered and damaged that her outside matched the inside.

But there wasn't much beyond superficial little wounds.

Without taking off more than his trainers and socks, he moved her into the shower-stall and followed, fully clothed, under the welcoming wet heat.

It woke her from her stupor. He'd taken care of her all the way home, she knew, and while this wasn't a competition and she'd clearly done her fair share of caretaking, she needed to do something to make him feel better, too. Because he was hurting, so much so that she could feel it in her own bones. Rose started to unfasten his belt and then took off his grubby jacket, pulled the t-shirt over his head and didn't stop until he was as naked as she was and they could cling to each other skin-to-skin and try to get warm.

In different circumstances, similarly shared showers had led to fun and games, but now she only shuddered and felt him tremble in answer against her chest. She was so tired, so endlessly tired.

* * *

She came to herself a while later, sitting on the floor of their shower-stall. Steam covered the glass-walls and warmed the small cabin to tolerable levels. With his clothes over the drain, a shallow but comfortably warm puddle had built up in the tub and from above, the still-warm water was flowing over their pruned bodies. She was finally warm again and her skin thoroughly clean, pink and wrinkly. The next step could be started. Carefully as not to dislodge the sleeping Doctor against her back, she grabbed the shampoo and started to wash her hair.

It still woke him, and she didn't object when he took over to lather her head and carefully, gently, wash everything he could reach.

She returned the favour, without shampoo, though, mindful of the gash on the side of his skull. Considering what had happened after, the wound seemed insignificant but it would probably need stitches. She could see inside the skin, and that couldn't be good.

When she told him so, he nodded but didn't react further. He hadn't spoken since coming home, and it was starting to worry her.

Together, they finally left the shower and dried off. Wrapped in their soft, wonderfully comfortable jammies and bathrobes, they went to the bedroom where Rose unceremoniously pushed him on the bed until he lay down. She would join him soon, but she had to call her parents before she fell asleep if she wanted to avoid her mother coming here and yelling at them for not being at the party. With a sigh, she picked up the landline-phone and dialled.

The clock on the bedside-table said it was only six. It felt like a lifetime.

* * *

Sleep was such a marvellous invention. He'd fallen into dreams the moment his head touched the pillow, and even though he doubted it had been a good sleep, it was still good enough to make him more alert and capable of coherent thought.

Rose was cuddled against him, snoring slightly. She was warm and soft and clean and alive, so wonderfully alive that he forgot about the bad things he'd done and just enjoyed her scent and feel. It was dark outside; he could see the gloom from the streetlamps through the open blinds. Must be very late, judging from the sky, and they had clearly missed the party.

Something clicked at the door. He froze, too weary right now to be heroic and confront a burglar. They could just take everything as long as they left him with Rose in the bed.

"Jackie, she said she doesn't need anything. You heard her." Oh, just Pete. Good, he could stay like this.

"Oh, shut up, you know what she's like. She could be bleeding to death from a missing leg and still say she doesn't need anything! I swear, she's like a bloody Australian, I don't know where she got it from! We'll just have a check and then she can be alone with her Doctor and pretend nothing can touch her. She's not a robot, you know?" Hearing that from his place on the bed, he winced. Not the best choice of words, considering what had happened to the original Jackie Tyler of this world.

Apparently, Jackie had realized that, too. She could be very perceptive when she wanted to be. "Oh, Pete, I'm sorry." He heard them hug and distantly hoped they wouldn't snog too much in the hallway, or they might decide to continue on the couch.

"It's okay Jacks. I know what you mean, it's fine." Good old Pete Tyler. He would butt heads with him on a regular basis, but he was a good man at heart, someone very worthy of butting heads with. "Okay, let's see that they're fine and be gone, I'm knackered. That Finch-fellow has eaten my patience tonight."

"Was that the one with the beard?"

"All of them had beards, Jacks. Except for the ladies. And even there, I have my suspicions."

"Oh, you know which one I mean. The one with the… the belly and … you know, the oh my god! Oh god, is that blood?"

Carefully, he stroked Rose's arm so she wouldn't wake from her mother's less-than-silent shout. He frowned, trying to remember which part of their clothing was out in the corridor but couldn't recall. They'd undressed in the shower, in his case literally.

Which meant Jackie had gone into their bathroom. Nice. He still refused to move.

"Yes, I think it is. Jackie, calm down."

"Calm down, calm _down_? This is our daughter we're talking about, and there're bloody clothes all over the bathroom! She could be dead" Jackie sobbed and he rolled his eyes. Clearly Rose wasn't dead, as she'd called her parents after the shower.

Which… was probably hours ago, so he had to give that point to Jackie. Reluctantly.

"I know. But Jackie. She called us and she might be underplaying things but she wouldn't just bleed to death. Also, the Doctor wouldn't let her bleed to death." Damn right he wouldn't!

"Oh, and where is he then? Where is everyone? Nobody is here, we just walked into their flat and you know how much Rose hates when I do that. So why isn't she here, yelling at us, huh? Tell me that, Mister Pete Tyler!"

'In bed, trying not to wake your daughter, Jackie,' he thought. 'Because she needs sleep, because she was amazing today but she's hurting and she needs to heal. So how about you just shut up and let her, Mrs Tyler, how about that?'

He didn't say anything though. Just buried his nose in Rose's hair.

"Jackie," Pete said, clearly trying to calm her down and make her see reason. As much as that was possible. "Let's just look around before you start crying and assuming the worst. There's probably a perfectly good explanation."

"Oh yeah? What would be perfectly good…" Jackie stopped. Good, because if she'd continued her racket in the bedroom, he'd have to do something about it. Maybe even get up. Or speak. "Oh."

"See?" Pete was whispering, holding his wife back at the shoulders. "There she is. Fine. Just sleeping."

"Are you sure? She could be dead." Jackie's voice shook, and for a moment he felt pity. Being Rose's mother couldn't be easy, not since she'd first met the Doctor. "They could both be dead, like Romelo and Julia."

He rolled his eyes again. He knew for a fact that Jackie knew the right name for the play, but for some reason she always pretended to be completely uneducated. Maybe she did it so Pete would take her to the theatre more. That would be quite clever.

"It's called… ah, why bother. They're not dead. They're breathing, see?" They probably couldn't see that his eyes were open, from the doorway all across to the bed. Good. He wouldn't have to speak then.

"I could just check…"

"No Jackie. Absolutely not. If they're sleeping through your unholy racket, they definitely need it. If you're so concerned, we'll come back tomorrow and pester them with motherly love and chicken-soup, but please, let's go home. Aljena probably wants to be in her own bed sometime tonight, too."

Aljena? Ah, the babysitter. Nice woman, very dependable he'd thought when he met her that one time. Bit soft maybe to deal with Tony, if you'd ask him.

"Fine. Fine, but we'll come back tomorrow. We can bring Tony-"

"Absolutely not. We promised him he can play with that Carter-boy tomorrow, remember? We'll just drop him off on the way here. Okay? Now let's go." Pete kissed Jackie on the temple and she smiled a little. With a last glance, she turned and walked away.

Pete's gaze followed her, then he turned into the room once more. Their eyes met, and he knew without a doubt now that Pete had known he was awake the whole time they had stood in the doorway. Peter nodded once and gave a little tip with his head, then stepped away and soon, the flat's door closed and the lock turned. They were alone. Rose gave a little sniffle and snuggled deeper against his shoulder.

Good man, Pete Tyler. Very good man, indeed.

* * *

When Rose woke up from the pleasant place her dreams had led her, the sun was shining outside and the bedroom was bathed in soft, reddish light from the half-drawn curtains. She smelled like shampoo and soap, felt soft and relaxed and for a few precious moments, she allowed herself to exist in the warm feel of contentment.

But she was awake now and her bladder was making protesting twinges she definitely couldn't ignore. Quickly she slipped into the bathroom where she took care of business and gave herself a quick wash. Their clothes from last night had been put away, and for all she knew they had landed in the garbage. Good riddance, she thought. From the kitchen, she could hear low noises and the incredibly enticing scents of food. She dashed over and there he was at the stove, slightly swaying his hips to the music from the radio. His hair was all over his head and he'd put a band-aid over the gash, simply stuck over the hair with no hope of staying in place longer than it took to wind his fingers through.

She bit her lip and smiled and walked over to lean against his spine. He didn't startle, had known she was there and just leaned back like a cat would lean into a caress. "Morning," he spoke with a grin and turned the bacon. "I didn't burn them!"

She giggled. "That's good, I'm half-starved, I could eat a horse. Better have this, though, especially when they're not burned to a crisp for once." She caught herself before she could ask where the eggs were. Bacon, toast and beans would be fine.

He turned around and kissed her, held her head to take a close look and then kissed her again. She was used to him bouncing around after terrible things, always bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and with manic energy to blow away her own blues. But that was the Doctor, the real Doctor. Well – the other real Doctor. After Cardiff, this one, her Doctor, he'd been whoozy and confused from the blow to the head – his first head-wound as a human – and had been sleeping irregularly and often. She'd accounted his silence and lack of the well-known coping skills to that. She'd also had her own issues to deal with, and maybe she just hadn't paid attention too well.

Now he was … still. Weirdly still. In the Tardis, his boundless energy had always been comfort to her, reassuring. 'As long as the Doctor dances, nothing can ever be too bad', she'd argued, though deep down she'd already known it was hogwash. Just because you pretended you were fine didn't mean you actually were. It was just as much a coping mechanism as taking drugs or sitting in a corner, rocking. A little healthier, maybe, but a front nonetheless.

And maybe, if she'd have thought about it, she would have expected something similar from his human counterpart. But it seemed she'd have been wrong. Maybe it was due to the Donna-parts in him, or maybe because it was a Time Lord thing to be so bouncy, but she suspected – without proof and no chance to ever find any – that the original Doctor would have spared the cheerfulness and quicksilver mood-changes if he'd not felt the need to impress his companions. Maybe what Rose was seeing here was the core of the Doctor, the core of _every_ Doctor. Or maybe not. She didn't know. But this Doctor, warm and soft with flour-handprints on his jammy-bottoms felt like a lily-pond on a sunny afternoon. Beautiful and soothing and calm, something to draw strength from just by being near. Oh, there would be things lurking under the surface, predators and prey living their endlessly balanced lives along each other. Insects and fish and … frogs and whatnot. Fighting and dying and living, over and over but not seen from the surface. Not if you didn't want to see.

She giggled as an image of dragonflies chasing each other around the Doctor's head popped up and she snuggled a little closer, taking what strength he offered her.

He breathed into her hair and for a moment, she wondered what it was she was providing him. Would she be like a lily-pond for him? Rose frowned. She didn't feel like a pond.

* * *

Even though breakfast had been delightful and the Doctor had returned to the teasing, playful sort of man she knew, there was a bit of a cloud hanging over Rose's head. She suspected it was as grey for him as it was for her, but for the moment, they wouldn't let it inside their bubble of happiness and calm.

Every so often, a flash of a frown crossed his features and she wondered what he was thinking of. Killing the thrall? Maybe the eggs? Something entirely different even?

It was around midday and they were still in their pyjamas when she heard a key in their lock, then voices outside the door and then, door half-open, a knock on the wood. He'd warned her that her mom would come, and so Rose wasn't surprised. Except for the fact that her mother had actually knocked.

She smirked and didn't move a muscle. The two of them had settled on the couch and the Doctor had fallen asleep against her shoulder. After some wriggling on her part, he'd started sagging down until she could put his head in her lap and just watch him every time she looked away from her little electronic notepad she was using to formulate a report for her boss. Someone had to check Downtown for more of these things, even if the man on her thighs was certain there were none. Better safe than sorry, she thought, and tried to find words for whoever got the task to ensure nobody else would be ensnared by those dangerously innocent eyes. Full leather-gear, maybe? A knight's armour?

"Rose?" her mom called from the hallway, "Rose, it's me and Pete. You're not dead, are you?" Rose smiled, then heard some threads of whispered conversation. "Or shagging?"

"We're here," she called quietly. The Doctor didn't stir but huffed in his sleep. She knew he was sleeping, not pretending, as now and then, little frown-lines crossed his face. He'd never let them if he were awake. "Shh, don't be so loud."

Jackie's head popped into the room. Her face softened a little at Rose's little wave from the couch and then mouthed 'kitchen' while holding up a bag with something, probably food prepared by their cook Roger. Thinking back, there had been no point in Rose's life where the idea of having a personal _cook_ was anything but a silly, daft dream of fancy. She hadn't ever been the 'one day I'll be a princess'-kind of girl. Before meeting the Doctor, she would have settled for being Mrs Rose Smith with a steady but boring job and maybe even a kid somewhere along the way.

She hadn't especially wanted a kid, but it was sorta what people did where she came from. Get a little job, look moderately pretty, go out, find a man, marry, get kids, live until you died. Maybe, to spice things up, get divorced or have a dog or learn how to be a battered housewife along the way, depending on chance.

Now, she couldn't imagine a life like that. Settled and … well. Boring, really. She was aware that not everyone would call it boring. For some, it would sound like a paradise. But for Rose Tyler, time-traveller and world-saviour, that kind of future came close to hell. She wanted more, now. Wanted to matter, wanted to see things, do things, experience the world in all its glory and gory facets. She wanted to run, laugh, cry, scream, yell from the top of her lungs to express the joy of being here, there – everywhere. Being alive. She wanted to _live_.

And she wanted him there by her side. She'd tried without him, but it had never been the same. And even if this wasn't the person she'd originally wanted, he was still… well. Good enough sounded so awful. But he was. Mickey hadn't been, for all his amazing traits and his dependability and his steady heart. He'd been her rock, all through her life, and she always felt a prickle of tears when she thought about the hurt she'd put him through. She'd never wanted to hurt him, but there it was: you can't always get what you want. And Mickey had simply never been enough.

In a way, it was best that he had stayed in the original universe. Rose missed him terribly, his friendship and his voice and his occasional bouts of brilliance, but she knew that as it had been, she would have always stood in his way. Just because she existed, he'd have put his life on hold the very moment she needed him. Every time. And that was unfair to him.

Good thing he'd been smart enough to understand himself, she thought. Because she wouldn't have let him go if it had been up to her, would have kept him tethered to her until she'd destroyed everything they'd had – and him along the way.

Rose Tyler was far from perfect.

"Hey kid," Pete said as he entered the room. He looked at the Doctor with a frown, then smiled at her with those unbelievably kind eyes that had hooked her the moment she'd first seen them. Tears welled up, completely unbidden and unexpected. She couldn't stop them fast enough, and her dad quickly sat down next to her and hugged her to him. "What's wrong? Can you tell me?"

She nodded, then shook her head. She didn't want to talk about their night, but she wanted him to know so she could _talk_ about it, seriously, without having to tell the story. Rose gave him the notepad and leaned into his side while he started to read.

The noises from her kitchen indicated that either her mom was preparing food or had started to clean the dishes, for once not talking. Maybe she was having a cry herself. She usually did the dishes when she wanted to have a cry in private.

The Doctor snuffled and moved his head, then moaned in protest as the lump on his skull got pressed against her leg. "I hit him with a rock," she muttered silently and worried the sleeve of his pyjama-shirt.

"Hmh?"

"Do you know someone who can stitch up a headwound? Or do you think it's too late for stitches?"

Pete sat up and put the pad away. "He's got a headwound? Again? You should have been to the hospital right away, or at least the moment you got out of Downtown." He'd apparently gotten that far in the report.

It was a thorough report. She had wanted it to be as accurate as possible.

"Couldn't," she muttered and played with the Doctor's hair. "We were all bloody and wet and … stuff." The idea of sitting in a hospital until someone had time to stitch him up, and then to have to go through all the questions and caring looks when they'd inevitably noticed their appearance had been too much for her. She suspected the Doctor hadn't even thought about it in the first place.

Pete sighed, then cast a quick glance to the door. Her mom was still puttering about, apparently. "Are you okay? Do you need a doctor?"

"I always need a Doctor; you know I do." He grimaced and Rose grinned. He'd stepped right in and it wouldn't do to disappoint him. "But no. I'm fine. No damage, just a scraped knee and got a bit bruised." _'Bit of mind-controlled,'_ she didn't add. "I promise. And he's fine apart from the knock on the head. Mostly fine." Her eyes flicked to his wrist again, where she knew the sleeve covered a bandage that hid a dark, ugly, circular bruise and rubbed-raw skin.

"Should he be sleeping so much?"

"I think so. He said it's fine." She caught the disbelieving eyebrow and smiled. Yeah – Rose hadn't believed him either. That's why she refused to leave him out of her sight for longer than a trip to the loo. "So… stitches?"

Pete sighed. "I could call someone, I guess. Or… I could do it, if you want?"

She knew Pete had gotten the advanced first-aid-training all senior members of Torchwood were obligated to. Even personnel who would never get out into the field had to have such training, as sometimes waiting for a real medic wasn't an option.

"Would you? If he wants to, that is."

"He wants," the Doctor mumbled, eyes still closed. "How long've you been here?" That question was clearly for Pete.

"'Bout ten minutes or so. Jackie's in the kitchen, but I think she must be done soon. Wanna swap places for this?"

Groaning a bit, the Doctor raised himself from his position, leaving a cold spot on Rose's thighs where his head had been. She missed it instantly.

As if on cue – which was probably exactly what had happened, Rose's mom came into the living-room, balancing a tray with glasses, four brightly-coloured bowls, spoons, water, juice, a basket of sliced bread and a pot that smelled delicious. Her eyes were a bit red and the mascara slightly smeared, but she was still a sight that warmed Rose's heart to the last little cold places left in it.

"Now, who wants to have some soup? Roger prepared something I don't know how to pronounce, but he swears it's good against everything, from heartbreak to headache and from cold to cancer. I think he was exaggerating about the cancer, though."

Pete stood to help the Doctor up, who was a bit whoozy whenever he had to change the relative position of his head. His spot hadn't even gotten a chance to grow cold until Jackie claimed it, already filling two bowls for Rose and herself.

"It smells amazing. And I'm starving, mom. Thank you."

* * *

"First aid kit?"

"Uh… somewhere in the bathroom." He gestured vaguely. Would be easy to find, since Rose had wrapped his wrists earlier and he didn't think she'd returned it to its usual place. "Where should we do this?"

"Take a seat at the table. I'll get a cushion, best if you can put your head down so you won't twitch too much. Ah", Pete raised a finger, "don't even start. We both know you do."

He sat down so the light wouldn't be obstructed, then stood once more to get a reading-lamp from the living-room. Jackie was talking to Rose a mile a minute, caring for her in the inexplicable Jackie-Tyler-way that gave her daughter the kind of comfort that wouldn't put her through the wringer. She glared at him when Rose wasn't looking, but it was half-hearted and held its own sort of affection.

He smiled back as well as he could.

Back in the kitchen, Pete had prepared the table and the medical equipment he would need. There was thread and a needle still in its sterile package, a towel, sterile wipes, a syringe with – probably, hopefully – a local anaesthetic and his electrical razor. He preferred to use the hand-razor usually but the electric one had its uses.

Sadly, one of those would be to cut away his hair. "Aww, but not too much! I just got the kink from the last time grown back again," he pouted but sat down when Pete gestured. Obediently, he put his elbows on the table and bowed his head into his hands so Peter could remove the very basic covering he'd used to stop the sting whenever air hit the open wound. The hands on his scalp where careful and warm when they parted the hair to check the damage.

Pete whistled in admiration. "That's impressive." He palpated the skull, which hurt even while he was careful, and then picked up the razor. "Okay, sorry if this hurts. I'll try to leave enough to keep you pretty."

It twinged a little. Nothing too bad.

"So," Pete spoke after he was done with the shaving. He was preparing the syringe now, after having wiped most of the surrounding area of the wound. "Rose gave me her report. Want to add anything to it? Sorry." He injected the needle into his scalp, which was a nasty feeling, and cleaned it some more. "Gotta have to clean the wound more thoroughly, there's some stuff in there that shouldn't be. Should be numb in a minute."

"Huhm. Yeah. Well. So… Car got stolen, got lost a bit. Met alien entity I've never seen before…"

While Pete disinfected and then stitched the wound, he told the story as best as he remembered and as close to the actual events as possible. He didn't want to say that Rose killed Millie-thrall though he suspected she would write it in her report anyway so he didn't leave it out completely. He didn't mention – and would take it to his grave – that Millie-thrall had still been alive for a while after Rose had hit. He'd still been connected to his emotions, had felt him dying slowly with no consciousness left beside pain and cold and loneliness. He hadn't been able to sooth him, lost and mindless as he had been himself.

Sleep would be a bit uncomfortable again for the next weeks, he supposed.

"So, these … thralls?" Pete poked the needle in once more. How long was that gash? "Have you ever encountered them before?"

"Nope. Told you, didn't I? Never seen them, never heard of such a species. Maybe they don't exist in the parallel world, or maybe they were extinct before I could meet them, or maybe I just hadn't met them by chance. Even though I know a lot, I don't know everything. And on this side of the void, what I _do_ know might not be true at all. It's… infuriating. Ouch."

"Sorry." He didn't seem to be, not really. "So, what are you saying? You're basically useless as a consultant?"

"No," he growled, head on his arms resting on the pillow. Pete's hand kept him down and he really, really, _really_ didn't like the position. "Not useless. Less useful than the Doctor when it comes to other species. But still a lot more useful than any of your 'experts'. Ouch!"

"Sorry."

"Stop saying it if you don't mean it. It's got no use for anyone if it's a lie." He had to fight not to jerk his head up and away. He did trust Pete, but he also sometimes didn't trust him very much. He'd trust him with Rose any day of the week, which was a lot, but he wouldn't give him access to the universe and all its secrets.

Pete sighed and loosened his grip a little. "Sorry. And I mean it. Just…Try to see it from my perspective. I have to keep this city safe. My family will always come first, but London and Britain are partly in my responsibility as well. I need to know as much as I can."

That sounded painfully similar to what that Torchwood-woman had said. Illona Halfman or something. _'The best for the British Empire'_ and all that. "Fine. First question then: what about the rest of Europe. Doesn't that matter?"

"Of course they do! But I have to prioritize, I can't think about everyone."

"But that's exactly the problem! It's exactly the same thing that happened with Torchwood on the other Earth – they singled out one country for which they cared and wanted the best, and never thought of the bigger picture. They acted rashly, not just on Canary Warf but way before, when they shot down the Sycorax. Or rather, when the Prime Minister ordered them shot down. Didn't even think what kind of message that sent out into the universe! If you act without considering enough consequences, you endanger more than 'just' the people immediately around you. If you act rashly enough, you might endanger the world."

"Oh, don't lecture me about that, _Doctor_! You of all people know about endangering the world, don't you?" The grip had gotten slightly tighter again.

"I'm not the same person, though, am I? I know what the Doctor did, know where he – me… we – made mistakes and where we did the right things which were still wrong. But opposed to you or anyone from Torchwood or any other _human_, in the other universe or here, he knows basically what's at stake. He might not be able to save everyone always, but he understands the ripple-effects and how to minimize them. Don't think it doesn't hurt when he has to sacrifice one group for the other. Don't _dare_ think that he wouldn't if forced to."

He took a deep breath and tried to ignore the fact that he was still in a very submissive position in front of a man with a needle. Pete wouldn't hurt him, he knew that much, but that still didn't make things any more comfortable. "Now. As I said, I'm not the Doctor. I'm… I don't know. But I'm not him. I don't know enough about this universe to judge, to make the right decisions based on what I remember because that might not count in this world anymore. My best guesses would still surpass yours or Torchwoods by miles, but I'm very, painfully aware that I'm on thin ice. I'm not a Time Lord. I can't see time anymore like I used to. I look at an event and don't instinctively know about its significance to the rest of the universe. I _can_ differentiate the most important turning points in a world, because I learned that and it's not solely based on species and it's still in my memories. But before, I only had to look and know. So right now, I'm trying really hard to be a good boy and not cause ripples, but my existence alone might have already changed things irrevocably. Everything the Doctor knew since my creation is lost to me, there's no connection between us other than looks, memory and some interesting things in my DNA. I _hope_ he made sure he wasn't causing a massive problem by dumping me here, but then again, Rose and Jackie being here might have already changed things. I don't know if the Cybermen where always meant to exist here, or if the bridge was always meant to be. But they existed, with no fault of the Doctor, I'd like to point out. So… who knows? I'm not as blind as most humans, but that doesn't mean I can see as well as the Doctor could."

He sighed and let himself sag a little. "There are two options for my situation. Sit still and be a citizen of Earth and don't interfere with anything. Give no help whatsoever, no matter who needs it, because I could change something that shouldn't be changed. Or I can help you lot and, in the meantime, sit my arse down and _study_, try to understand as much about this universe as possible and be careful where I place my feet. And I'll be honest – I'm really, terribly bad at sitting still."

Pete now only had his palm on the top of his head, there was no pressure at all to keep him still. And yet, he didn't move, just stayed where he was until Mr Tyler had thought his thoughts to his satisfaction.

"So basically, you know enough to be really, really dangerous, is that what you're saying?" But his words weren't harsh, or confrontative. Pete was seeking information.

Good.

"I am, yes. A lot less so than the Doctor, but a lot more than humans, yes. Partly because of what I am, partly because of the fact alone that I exist, and partly because I'm very, very clever and that, I have found, is a dangerous trait in humans."

He waited a beat. "You could, of course, always lock me up somewhere so I can't cause trouble."

Pete was still thinking, absently tying up the thread and cleaning the stitched wound once more. The disinfectant stung a little but it was merely irritating. "I could, yes. Or have you shot, I'd guess, but … that's not what Torchwood is about. We don't just lock people up just because we don't understand what they are! If they're a threat – that's different. But even if you irritate me on most days and drive me round the bend on others, I know for a fact you're not an enemy, and a threat only by circumstances."

He felt a huge grin spread over his face; pure relief and satisfaction. Pete gave his skull a little pat to let him know he could come back up, and the two of them looked each other in the eyes for the first time this day.

"I'll keep an eye out, though. You need supervision, even if that's just to keep you from blowing yourself up accidentally. Or get eaten by thralls." Pete smiled at him, comfortable and maybe with a pinch of fondness.

"That's understandable." He smirked "Don't think I won't use my irritating traits to cheat, though."

"Wouldn't have crossed my mind. Now, hold still for the band-aid." It was one of those colourful ones Rose had bought for him. Originally for children, but why adults would prefer plain beige ones over cute yellow ducks was anyone's guess.

He touched his head and got a slap from Pete, who was packing away their medical supplies, before he could irritate the wound or dislodge the band-aid.

"Thank you, Peter," he said sincerely.

Pete looked up and met his gaze, nodding his head just slightly. Something passed between them, something that often did so when they had arguments they were able to settle in some capacity. "You're welcome, Doctor. Now – how about some of the soup? And then you can tell me whatever you _did_ get from the thralls. Just so we can be prepared."


	18. Chapter 18

Things… went on. Slowly. He didn't like slow. Really, really didn't, but he knew that it was important sometimes. Slowly, his hair grew back over the shaved patch.

Slowly, Rose found her smile again, the happy, playful, tongue-in-cheek one he fell into when he first met her and fell _for_ not much later. She got back to work after having taken an extended sick-leave for a week and with having something to do, her mind reasserted itself more and more each day.

Slowly, his own mind was starting to put things in boxes to keep them safe. He didn't lock them away behind tons of chains and metal-barriers, though. They came in simple, wooden drawers, easily accessible should he need them in the future or for when he felt like taking them out, examine them, turn them this way and that way to see the cracks, the places he could have chosen different, where he had chosen wrong. Then he put them back and went on with his life.

They didn't talk more than usual, it wasn't really 'them'. Of course they _talked_, but not about their day in Downtown. Other than Donna, who could really talk his ear off in any universe when she needed to sort out some of her inner demons, Rose preferred to just simply lie on him, snuggle up to him, curl around him or let him curl around her or do something more adult whenever she needed to get things unstuck. He'd made it clear that he would always listen if she wanted to, but she'd not taken him up on it. And even if he knew he could talk to her, he … well. Didn't. They ran whenever they felt the need, most times together and sometimes either of them alone. Sometimes, they ran at the same time at the same place in the same direction but were alone anyway. On those days, they always made sure to go home together.

Jackie started a new project: campaigning for better healthcare and housing-developments for the poorest of London, paying special attention to get the children fed, educated and cared for whenever possible. She didn't exactly go out to deliver soup in the rain, but after Rose had told her about their day in Downtown and after she'd insisted on a trip to see it herself, she'd thrown pure Jackie-determination towards making a difference. What good would money do if you only kept it to yourself, after all.

Torchwood, aided by Pete's suggestions and led by Jake Simmonds, who'd lived in the better parts of Downtown before the war with the Cybermen, had slowly combed the rubbled ruins for any sign of eggs, alien thralls or other interesting things. They'd found the source of all the rubble, though to his immense relief it didn't have anything to do with the thralls. In fact, it turned out to be a species of rock-lice, native to Viccobuelowsia Six and very non-sentient, which had been brought to Earth in the rock-collection of a Viccobuelowsian tourist's son.

It had been a long time since the Doctor had laughed so hard when Rose told him about the Big Torchwood Lice Hunt.

Slow were the working-days which didn't want to end, and even slower where the tests necessary to make his power-cell an actual success. It was taking so, so long, but he understood. In fact, he'd insisted on the arduous process himself. He needed to make sure people couldn't just transform all his work into a weapon. He loved humanity, but he'd never trust them with something he'd invented. He was too clever and it was highly possible he'd overdo it with the cleverness.

Slow where also his self-experiments with Rose, trying to see if some part of him was still at least slightly telepathic. He'd tried to read her thoughts or emotions through touch, like he'd been able to before being … well, _this_, but except for a few whispers, he'd not had much success. The whispers were enough to encourage him to try, but since it needed two people and Rose quite often didn't want to be his test-subject, he'd been severely limited in practice-hours.

He'd convinced Donna, one time, but that had been … disturbing. He'd walked right into her head without even trying really hard, completely inside her mind and her thoughts and her memories, and everything had been open, laid out to study if he so desired. He'd jerked away from her quickly, the equivalent of slapping his hands in front of his eyes so he wouldn't accidentally see anything and told her he couldn't read her and was probably the telepathic version of a squib. She hadn't quite looked like she believed him, but if he never initiated a contact with her, it wouldn't matter.

And slowly, slowly, his history-lessons were getting along. It was… well, it was incredibly boring, to be perfectly honest. Most of the things he read were so similar to original Earth that he could skip it, but now and then there were little differences and he needed to find them to understand their significance. Finding fixed points in time was difficult when you only had the memory of Academy-lessons and Earth History at your disposal. History was usually written by the winners, so not everything would be perfectly accurate, for one. And second, while he did pass his tests way back when on Gallifrey, it hadn't been his favourite subject nor had it been one he'd particularly excelled in. And third, it had been a very, very long time ago.

In short, it was tedious and he was easily distracted by everything and especially by Rose. Which made the whole process a lot slower.

But one dull, rainy Sunday in July, he found Rose in the living-room on the couch wearing her fluffy slippers, crumbling Hobnobs all over her weekend-clothes. He leaned against the doorframe and watched as she dunked one of the biscuits into her mug – probably milk, she didn't like Hobnobs with tea – and stared at the telly where some costume-film was playing.

She'd been good for some time now, her experience with the thrall and its gruesome death had lost its sharpness and she had stopped blanking out when there was a blond child in her vicinity. She'd even minded Tony for a few times without dread spreading over her. She was good, but she'd seemed edgy the last few weeks. If he knew her at all – and he rather thought he did – she was getting antsy once more for something different.

Mind made up, he turned about to walk into their little office-room – just a closet-sized room where either of them could putter about for their respective jobs – and unlocked his top-secret compartment which Rose had of course noticed but so far not been able to break into. He'd get her a key, soon.

He went back to the living-room and Rose was still in the same position, so mind-numbingly not-Rose that it ached somewhere inside him.

"Rose Tyler," he said and she turned, head cocked slightly at his serious tone. He had his hands behind his back and as her gaze narrowed down on it, he felt a wave of affection and the tantalizing thrill of oncoming adventure in his veins.

"What's this? You're not proposing, are you?"

He laughed. "Well, if I would, you'd have just ruined the moment." He hopped over to her, barely able to contain his excitement and sank down on his knees so he could lean his chin on her legs and look up at her. He loved looking up at her.

She switched off the telly and he felt her shift, clearly unsure about what was coming now. Smiling, he pulled his hand to the front, dangling the vortex-manipulator – much improved safety-measures, new, tamper-proofed energy-cell and all – from thumb and index-finger into her line of sight.

The moment she understood what she was looking at, that second of doubt, the blink it took for her to take in his own face and the exact moment she allowed herself to _believe_ was the very, absolutely very, very best moment in his life.

He waggled his eyebrows at her. "So, Rose Tyler. Fancy a trip?"

He'd been wrong. The very, very best moment in his life was the one right after.

And then the one after that. And the next one.

And maybe meeting the Beatles.


End file.
